Synopsis
Among the most remarkable discoveries has been the identification of a fast radio outburst (FRB) by researchers at Northwestern and McGill Universities. For decades, astronomers have been fascinated with rapid radio bursts (FRBs), which are dazzling, millisecond-long energy explosions that release more energy than the sun does in a year. First seen in 2007, these cosmic whistles are usually from distant galaxies and remain one of the biggest mysteries of the universe. A new discovery, however, challenged the conventional wisdom of their evolutionary background.
The FRB 20240209A was discovered in February 2024 by a group of scientists as part of the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME). In the following months, the space breakout imploded 21 times, providing astrophysicists with an opportunity to trace its origin and a focus within 11.3 billion years ago time of a very old galaxy. This galaxy, at a distance of 2 billion light-years, has long stopped making stars, and therefore it is a surprising candidate for such an energetic event.
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Historically, however, FRBs were assumed to be linked to magnetars neutron stars with extreme magnetic fields. Magnetars are well known for their ability to “explode” with very powerful bursts of energy and they may be the most probable option among the contenders as to the source of FRBs. However, the magnetar intrinsically associated with this burst appears to have survived in a Galactic environment now considered to be far from any conditions under which such outbursts could be maintained.
The explosion can be clearly traced to a globular cluster—a small group of old stars bound by gravity—located about 130,000 light-years away from their host galaxy’s core. This is the second detection of an F
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