Astronomers find the nearest extragalactic radio burst

The new radio burst is located at a distance of 11.7 million light-years: previously these objects were not so close

It is 40 times closer than other known extragalactic signals.And it's coming from a strange place, not at all from where you'd expect a signal fromFRB stars, from a cluster of very old stars.

Fast radio bursts, from the English. Fast Radio Bursts (FRB) - single radio pulses of unknown nature recorded by radio telescopes with a duration of several milliseconds.

In a new study, the authors argue that FRB 20200120E really comes from the globular cluster M81, that is, the mechanism for the formation of fast radio bursts is broader than previously assumed.

Since such globular clusters contain old stellar populations, this association throwschallenging FRB models that use magnetars formed in a core-collapse supernova as a source of FRB radiation. 

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The authors suggested that the sourceradio bursts may not be a magnetar, but a low-mass X-ray binary such as a white dwarf and a neutron star or a neutron star and an exoplanet.

Because globular clusters are so dense, the stars in them can interact and even collide with each other, creating objects such as low-mass X-ray binaries and pulsars.

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