Gamma ray bursts are probably the most luminous explosions within the universe, briefly outshining whole galaxies in a violent flash of excessive power radiation. These – excuse the pun – astronomical detonations launch extra power in just a few seconds than our solar will produce over its whole ten billion 12 months lifetime, sending jets of gamma rays racing by area. Despite their unimaginable brightness, gamma ray bursts are fleeting occasions, lasting wherever from milliseconds to a number of minutes earlier than fading away.
On seventh March 2023, satellites detected one in all these gamma ray bursts, this one designated GRB 230307A. It was the second brightest burst ever recorded and originated from the collision and merger of two compact stars, seemingly neutron stars, positioned in a distant galaxy. What made this occasion notably curious was its unusually lengthy period of 1 minute, when concept predicted it ought to final lower than two seconds for one of these merger occasion.
“This event gave us a rare opportunity, by uncovering its hidden ‘heartbeat’, we can finally say with confidence that some GRBs are powered not by black holes, but by newborn magnetars.”
Professor Bing Zhang, Chair Professor of the Department of Physics at HKU and co-corresponding writer of the research.
An worldwide staff led by researchers from the University of Hong Kong, Nanjing University, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences determined to dig deeper into the occasion. They searched by greater than 600,000 datasets collected by China’s GECAM satellites and NASA’s Fermi satellite, searching for hidden patterns within the burst. What they found was a repeating signal that maintained a very consistent rhythm over time revealing that the star was spinning at 909 times per second. This rapid pulsation represents the first direct detection of a periodic signal from a millisecond magnetar inside a gamma ray burst.
The surprise was understanding why the signal was so brief. The team theorize that the magnetar’s rapid spin imprints a periodic signal onto the gamma ray jet through its magnetic field, but because the jet evolves quickly, this heartbeat becomes visible only when the emission briefly becomes asymmetric. For just 160 milliseconds, the periodic pulse was detectable before the jet’s symmetry concealed it again.
The discovery transforms our understanding of the most extreme explosions in the universe and shows that newly born magnetars can survive compact star mergers. The research opens fascinating new avenues in astronomy, linking gamma rays, gravitational waves, and the physics of compact stars under the most extreme conditions imaginable.
The original version of this text was revealed on Universe Today.