Astronomers have been tracking a mysterious cosmic object that has performed 1,652 energy bursts in a short period of time. Although researchers have not explained what caused it to repeat so frequently, they hope that new observations will help them uncover the reason.
This object is called an FRB (Fast Radio Burst), a mysterious phenomenon first observed in 2007. FRBs produce pulses in the radio part of the electromagnetic spectrum. These pulses last only a few milliseconds but emit as much energy as the Sun does in a year.
Some objects in the universe explode continuously.
Some FRBs emit energy only once, but many— including FRB 121102—are known to repeat their bursts. Using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in China, a team of scientists decided to conduct an extensive study on this repeating FRB.
Bing Zhang, an astrophysicist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA, stated that the campaign aimed solely to collect regular data on this specific entity.
Mr. Zhang further explained that FAST is the most sensitive radio telescope in the world, enabling it to detect phenomena that previous observatories may have missed. Over about 60 hours, researchers monitored FRB 121102 erupting 1,652 times, sometimes reaching up to 117 times per hour, far exceeding any other repeating FRB.
Most FRBs occur in distant parts of the universe, making them challenging to study. However, in 2020, astronomers discovered an FRB within our Milky Way galaxy, allowing them to ascertain that its origin was a type of dead star known as a magnetar.
Magnetars are formed from the remnants of supernova explosions called neutron stars. While all neutron stars have strong magnetic fields, some exotic stars possess particularly intense magnetic fields that can distort their behavior, making them magnetars. It remains undetermined whether all FRBs are magnetars.
If FRB 121102 is indeed a magnetar, the data collected by Zhang and his colleagues suggest that the rapid bursts are occurring right on the star’s surface rather than in the surrounding gas and dust.
Victoria Kaspi, an astrophysicist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who studies FRBs, noted that many repeating FRBs may be generating a large number of bursts and are detected thanks to the remarkable sensitivity of FAST.
