Astronomers have traced a fast radio burst (FRB) detected in 2022 to a magnetar, a type of neutron star with extremely powerful magnetic fields, located in a galaxy 200 million light-years away. This provides the first conclusive evidence that FRBs can originate from the magnetospheres of magnetars. FRBs are brief, powerful bursts of radio emission that are difficult to study due to their unpredictable nature and fleeting duration.
detected in 2022, a team of astronomers has traced its source to the powerful magnetic field around a magnetar, in a galaxy 200 million light-years away.
FRBs are hard to study because most of the time, they burst only once. This makes them impossible to predict, and tricky – but not impossible – to trace back to a source. A number of one-off FRBs have been traced to galaxies across millions to billions of light-years of space-time. "The exciting thing here is, we find that the energy stored in those magnetic fields, close to the source, is twisting and reconfiguring such that it can be released as radio waves that we can see halfway across the Universe."
Fast Radio Burst Magnetar Neutron Star Magnetosphere Astrophysics
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