Fast radio bursts (FRBs) were initially discovered by scientists in 2007, according to Science Alert.
These radio emissions, lasting merely milliseconds, are immensely powerful and typically occur just once, which makes them challenging to analyze.
In 2022, a group of astronomers focused on a radio burst identified as FRB 20221022A, detected from a galaxy approximately 200 million light-years away, with the signal lasting about two milliseconds.
Scientists have since traced the radio wave’s origin, as detailed in a new study published in Nature, titled “Magnetospheric origin of a fast radio burst constrained using scintillation,” considering two main possibilities.
To track the source of FRB 20221022A, the team examined a phenomenon known as scintillation.
Scintillation, also referred to as twinkling, is defined by NASA’s Thesaurus as the “generic term for rapid variations in apparent position, brightness, or color of a distant luminous object viewed through the atmosphere.” The study indicated that fluctuations in the FRB’s brightness suggest the radio burst occurred near its origin.
Another paper, titled “A pulsar-like polarization angle swing from a nearby fast radio burst,” assessed the radio waves’ shape, revealing “a notable approximately 130° PA rotation over its about 2.5 ms burst duration, resembling the characteristic S-shaped evolution seen in many pulsars and some radio magnetars.” This supports the theory that the radio wave originates from a region with a strong magnetic field and rotation.
The team further verified that some scintillation was due to gas in the FRB’s host galaxy, allowing them to pinpoint a region as small as 10,000 kilometers from which the burst emanated.
Given the pattern’s similarities to past observations of highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars, researchers concluded that FRB 20221022A likely originated from near a rotating neutron star, bursting within its magnetosphere.
Kiyoshi Masui, a physicist at MIT, stated: “Zooming in to a 10,000-kilometer region, from a distance of 200 million light years, is like being able to measure the width of a DNA helix, which is about two nanometers wide, on the surface of the moon.”
“There’s an amazing range of scales involved.”
Masui further explained that while atoms cannot exist around “highly magnetic neutron stars, also known as magnetars,” as they would “just get torn apart by the magnetic fields,” the “exciting thing here is” that the study found “the energy stored in those magnetic fields, close to the source, is twisting and reconfiguring such that it can be released as radio waves that we can see halfway across the Universe.”