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What is this violent astronomical mystery that has been solved thanks to a network of European telescopes?

The Westerbork synthetic telescope manages to detect FRBs from young neutron stars.

The Westerbork synthetic telescope manages to detect FRBs from young neutron stars.

© van Leeuwen / Astron

Using the Westerbork radio telescope network, a team of astronomers has solved a two-decade-old mystery by linking FRBs to very large, dead, highly magnetic stars: neutron stars.

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The Westerbork Radio Telescope Network in the Netherlands.

The Westerbork Radio Telescope Network in the Netherlands.

© Wikipedia

What are Fast Radio Bursts?

In 2007, American astronomer Duncan Lorimer discovered that the galaxy known as the Small Magellanic Cloud was traversed by a very brief and powerful energetic flash, which is completely unknown at this time. It even appears to be 3 billion light-years ahead of our smaller neighboring galaxy. At the time, this was the first known fast radio burst. A typical FRB lasts about 1 millisecond and concentrates more energy than the Sun’s entire output for an entire month. In summary, it is both violent and short!

These FRBs were the most interesting because at the time, we didn’t really know what caused them and everything was imagined. Why not messages from a highly advanced extraterrestrial civilization? SETI, a very serious North American agency responsible for detecting all forms of cosmic intelligence, got involved. After the discovery of dozens of other signals coming from all directions, this hypothesis was dispelled.

Dozens of FRBs are observed coming from all directions.

FRB 150418 found in a large elliptical galaxy (right: radio peak detected by the Parkes Telescope, David Kaplan/Ethan Kane).

FRB 150418 was found in a large elliptical galaxy. Right, the radio peak detected by the Parkes telescope.

© It’s happening there.

The search for FRBs particularly intensified in the mid-2010s, with astronomers excited by the prospect of discovering a new type of star, perhaps even stranger than a black hole. This is when we started to find them everywhere around us in the universe.

After two years of observations and investigations, the solution comes out.

Inés Pastor-Marazuela (Astron), lead author of the study published in Astronomy and AstrophysicsExplain: “We were able to study these bursts with an incredible level of detail. We found that they have a very similar shape to what we see in young neutron stars. […] The way radio flashes are created, and then modified as they travel through space over billions of years, is also consistent with the origin of the neutron star, making the result even stronger.”

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