• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Flash Of Gamma Rays In Nearby Galaxy Came From Stupendously Magnetic Dead Star

April 24, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Last November, astronomers saw a quick gamma-ray explosion lasting one-tenth of a second. Then, 13 seconds later, they knew it came from galaxy M82, which is just 12 million light-years away. Basically next door, as galaxies go. This suggested they had witnessed something quite rare, a flare from a magnetar.

A magnetar is a special type of neutron star with an incredible magnetic field. Neutron stars are the end product of certain supernovae. They are the extremely dense and degenerate core of dead massive stars. Short gamma-ray bursts are usually caused by neutron star collisions, which release a lot of energy and gravitational waves, but the team suspected an even rarer phenomenon involving a magnetar.

Advertisement

Over the last 50 years, there have been only three other known flares from magnetars, all releasing short gamma-ray bursts. They were seen either from our own galaxy or the Large Magellanic Cloud, the largest and one of the closest galactic companions to the Milky Way. This is the fourth and most distant yet, but still so much closer than any other short gamma-ray burst.

“We immediately realised that this was a special alert. Gamma-ray bursts come from far-away and anywhere in the sky, but this burst came from a bright nearby galaxy,” lead author Dr Sandro Mereghetti of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF–IASF) in Milan, said in a statement emailed to IFLScience.

If that were the case, this would be the first detection of a magnetar in a galaxy beyond the sphere of influence of the Milky Way, and the team used many telescopes to confirm whether this was what they were seeing.

The galaxy is messy. its main body is a bright blue-white fuzzy region. On top of it at ninety degrees an hourshape glass of red dust and gas is visible

M82 as seen by Hubble.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA). Acknowledgment: J. Gallagher (University of Wisconsin), M. Mountain (STScI) and P. Puxley (NSF)

From the original alert from the Integral satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA), they employed observatories in both X-rays, such as ESA’s XMM-Newton, and in the visible range to see the expected aftermath of neutron star collisions. The team also checked gravitational wave detectors. They didn’t see any telltale signs.  

Advertisement

“XMM-Newton’s observations only showed the hot gas and stars in the galaxy. If this explosion had been a short gamma-ray burst, we would have seen a fading source of X-rays coming from its location, but this afterglow was not present,” explained co-author Dr Michela Rigoselli, also from INAF. 

“Using ground-based optical telescopes, including the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo and the French Observatoire de Haute-Provence, we looked for a signal in visible light, starting only a few hours after the explosion, but again we did not find anything. With no signal in X-rays and visible light, and no gravitational waves measured by detectors on Earth (LIGO/VIRGO/KAGRA), we are certain the signal came from a magnetar,” concluded Mereghetti.

M82 is considered a starburst galaxy, a galaxy which is producing a lot of stars. Some of those stars live fast and die young, going supernova and leaving behind neutron stars – and, in some cases, magnetars. These objects have a magnetic field one trillion times more powerful than that of our planet. It might be possible that it is a temporary feature that only young neutron stars have.

The discovery suggests that starburst galaxies such as M82 are great places to look for magnetars, and astronomers will keep an eye out for more flares from such a fascinating galaxy.

Advertisement

The study is published in the journal Nature.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Hyundai Motor set to use internally developed chip for upcoming car -media report
  2. Soccer-England to host new annual women’s tournament starting 2022
  3. Surprise! First Wild Bison Calf Born In UK For Thousands Of Years
  4. British People Sound Smarter Than Americans, Right?

Source Link: Flash Of Gamma Rays In Nearby Galaxy Came From Stupendously Magnetic Dead Star

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • The Race Back To The Moon: US Vs China, Will What Happens Next Change The Future?
  • NOAA Issues G3 Geomagnetic Storm Warning As 500,000 Kilometer Hole Sends Solar Wind At Earth
  • Lasting 776 Days, This Is The Longest Case Of COVID-19 Ever Recorded
  • Living Cement: The Microbes In Your Walls Could Power The Future
  • What Can Your Earwax Reveal About Your Health?
  • Ever Seen A Giraffe Use An Inhaler? Now You Can, And It’s Incredibly Wholesome
  • Martian Mudstone Has Features That Might Be Biosignatures, New Brain Implant Can Decode Your Internal Monologue, And Much More This Week
  • Crocodiles Weren’t All Blood-Thirsty Killers, Some Evolved To Be Plant-Eating Vegetarians
  • Stratospheric Warming Event May Be Unfolding In The Southern Polar Vortex, Shaking Up Global Weather Systems
  • 15 Years Ago, Bees In Brooklyn Appeared Red After Snacking Where They Shouldn’t
  • Carnian Pluvial Event: It Rained For 2 Million Years — And It Changed Planet Earth Forever
  • There’s Volcanic Unrest At The Campi Flegrei Caldera – Here’s What We Know
  • The “Rumpelstiltskin Effect”: When Just Getting A Diagnosis Is Enough To Start The Healing
  • In 1962, A Boy Found A Radioactive Capsule And Brought It Inside His House — With Tragic Results
  • This Cute Creature Has One Of The Largest Genomes Of Any Mammal, With 114 Chromosomes
  • Little Air And Dramatic Evolutionary Changes Await Future Humans On Mars
  • “Black Hole Stars” Might Solve Unexplained JWST Discovery
  • Pretty In Purple: Why Do Some Otters Have Purple Teeth And Bones? It’s All Down To Their Spiky Diets
  • The World’s Largest Carnivoran Is A 3,600-Kilogram Giant That Weighs More Than Your Car
  • Devastating “Rogue Waves” Finally Have An Explanation
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version