Do mysterious fast bursts of radio waves tend to be generated in massive galaxies?

Fast bursts of radio waves (FRBs) have baffled the scientific community since the first one was discovered in 2007. These are mysterious, ultra-brief “flashes,” lasting just a few thousandths of a second, that They do not seem to fit with any known astrophysical phenomenon, although it is clear that colossal amounts of energy are involved in them.

Lately, suspicions have increased that the source of this unusual phenomenon may be in the stars known as magnetars.

Magnetars are a type of neutron star and the most powerful magnets in the universe. Neutron stars are star corpses that are denser than a white dwarf but less dense than a black hole.

A key clue about the involvement of magnetars in fast bursts of radio waves came when a magnetar in our own galaxy experienced a violent phenomenon that caused it to generate striking emissions. Several observatories, including STARE2 (Survey for Transient Astronomical Radio Emission 2) at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in the United States, captured the emissions in real time.

Now, the team of Kritti Sharma and Vikram Ravi, both at Caltech, has determined where in the universe fast bursts of radio waves are most likely to be emitted. Apparently, they are more likely to arise from galaxies with high mass and a lot of star formation activity than from galaxies with low mass.

This finding, in turn, has led to new ideas about how magnetars form. Specifically, the study suggests that these exotic dead stars, whose magnetic fields are 100 trillion (millions of millions) times stronger than that of the Earth, usually form when two stars merge and subsequently explode in a supernova. Until now, it was unclear whether magnetars formed this way, from the explosion of two merging stars, or whether they could form when a single star exploded.

This photographic montage reproduces antennas used to discover and locate the emission points of fast bursts of radio waves. Above the antennas, images of some of the galaxies from which bursts of that kind have arrived are shown. These galaxies are remarkably large and massive. (Image: Annie Mejia/Caltech)

The study is titled “Preferential Occurrence of Fast Radio Bursts in Massive Star-Forming Galaxies.” And it has been published in the academic journal Nature. (Fountain: NCYT by Amazings)