NASA scientists discover explosive radio waves that emit as much energy as the sun | Top Vip News

Space scientists have long wondered what causes certain extreme radio phenomena in space, which cause powerful, fast bursts of radio waves. Now scientists have taken a step closer to understanding this phenomenon called “fast radio bursts” after two NASA X-ray telescopes captured a dead star exploding in radio waves. This explosion, which lasted just a second, emitted as much energy as the sun released in an entire year. What made this explosion even more interesting is that it emitted laser-like rays of light instead of being a chaotic explosion.

The scientists detailed these observations in a paper recently accepted in the scientific journal Nature. The 20-page paper is titled “Rapid spin changes around a fast radio burst from a magnetar.” Before this study, space scientists had wondered about the origin of fast radio bursts. These radio bursts are brief and come from outside our galaxy. In 2020, scientists made a breakthrough when they observed that the remains of a collapsed star, called a magnetar, were emitting brief but intense radio bursts within our galaxy.

Two years later, in October 2022, the same magnetar, named SGR 1935+2154, emitted another fast radio burst. This time NASA researchers were lucky enough to capture and study this explosion with the help of two X-ray telescopes, namely the NICER (Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer) installed on the International Space Station and the NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) installed in low Earth orbit.

Telescopes documented the magnetar for hours, capturing what happened on its surface and its immediate surroundings, before and after the rapid radio burst. According to an article posted on NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory website, the “fast radio burst” occurred between “two failures” when the magnetar suddenly began spinning at an estimated speed of 11,000 kph (7,000 mph).

Chin-Ping Hu, astrophysicist and lead author of the study, said: “Normally, when failures occur, it takes weeks or months for the magnetar to return to its normal speed. “Clearly, things are happening with these objects on much shorter time scales than we previously thought, and that could be related to how quickly the radio bursts are generated.”

However, despite these important observations, scientists are far from concluding what triggers “fast radio bursts.” George Younes, a member of the NICER science team specializing in magnetars, said: “We have certainly observed something important to our understanding of fast radio bursts, but I think we still need a lot more data to complete the mystery.”