This discovery confirms long-standing suspicions that some gamma-ray bursts are cosmic
“The discovery of the existence of a population of extragalactic magnetic flares presents LIGO and nuclear physicists with a future opportunity to explore key questions about the universe.”
Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy Eric Burns.
Magnetic flare on April 15 proves that theseevents constitute a separate class of gamma-ray bursts. Burns directed the investigation of additional suspects using data from multiple missions. Flares near the M81 galaxy in 2005 and the Andromeda galaxy, or M31, in 2007 were already considered giant flares, and the team identified the flare in M83 in 2007. Scientists have also observed giant flares in 1979, 1998 and 2004.
"This is a small sample, but now we havehave a better idea of their true energy and how far away we can detect them. A few percent of short gamma-ray bursts may actually be flares from giant magnetars. In fact, they may be the most common high-energy explosions we have detected so far beyond our galaxy—about five times more common than supernovae."
Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy Eric Burns.
GRB are the most powerful explosions in space, whichcan be found billions of light-years away. Those that last less than two seconds are called short gamma-ray bursts, and they occur when a pair of spinning neutron stars, which are crushed remnants of exploding stars, spiral into each other and merge. Astronomers have confirmed this scenario for at least some short bursts of gamma-ray bursts in 2017, when the burst followed the arrival of gravitational waves or ripples in spacetime created by merging neutron stars 130 million light years away.
"The Favorite Explanation of Mostshort gamma-ray bursts are that they emit a jet of debris moving at close to the speed of light, resulting from the merger of neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole. LIGO discovered that there was a merger of compact objects and a short gamma-ray burst. Together, we know that what we observed was a merger of two neutron stars, strongly supporting the relationship."
Eric Burns of the Gamma Ray Burst Monitoring Group, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Magnetars are neutron stars with the mostthe strongest known magnetic fields, which are a thousand times the intensity of typical neutron stars. Small perturbations in the magnetic field can cause magnetars to erupt in sporadic bursts of X-rays for weeks or longer. Magnetars rarely cause huge eruptions called giant flares that produce gamma rays, the highest energy form of light.
About 4:42 a.m. On April 15, 2020, a short, powerful burst of X-rays and gamma rays passed Mars, triggering a Russian high-energy neutron detector aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft, which has been orbiting the planet since 2001. About 6.6 minutes later, the explosion triggered the Russian Konus instrument aboard NASA's Wind satellite, which revolves around a point between the Earth and the Sun, located at a distance of about 1.5 million km. After another 4.5 seconds, the radiation passed through the Earth, launching instruments on NASA's Fermi gamma-ray telescope, as well as on the INTEGRAL satellite and the European Space Agency's atmospheric-space interaction monitor aboard the ISS. The pulse of radiation lasted only 140 milliseconds, that is, with the speed of blinking or clicking a finger.
Giant flares from magnetars in the Milky Way andits satellites evolve in their own way, with a rapid increase to maximum brightness, followed by a more gradual tail of fluctuating radiation. These changes are due to the rotation of the magnetar, which repeatedly moves the flare to the Earth and uses it as a beacon.
Watching this tail waggingconvincing evidence of a giant outbreak. However, when viewed from a distance of millions of light-years, this radiation is too dim to detect with modern instruments. Since these signatures are absent, giant flares in the vicinity of the Galaxy can be disguised as much more distant and powerful merger-type gamma-ray bursts.
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