This quote from the article essentially sums up a current leading theory on the cause of frbs. A good image is also in the article. The theory derives from work done studying the downward...
Imagine a magnetar, a city-sized neutron star forged in a supernova only a few years or decades earlier, its surface roiling and churning. Like the sun on a bad day, this young magnetar releases occasional flares that blast out electrons, positrons and maybe heavier ions at near the speed of light. When this material launches, it runs into older particles vomited out during previous flares. Where the new ejecta meets the older debris, it piles up into a shock, inside which magnetic fields soar. As the shock presses outward, the electrons inside gyrate around along magnetic field lines, and that motion produces a burst of radio waves. That signal then shifts from higher to lower frequencies as the shock slows. (And presumably, far away and eons later, Earth’s astronomers get a very exciting email alert from radio telescopes.)
This quote from the article essentially sums up a current leading theory on the cause of frbs. A good image is also in the article. The theory derives from work done studying the downward intensities of nuclear explosion blasts. Very cool. But still surprising that something so young (a magnetar) having merely an ejection in its own magnetized field surrounded by plasma could create one of the most intense (albeit short lived) radio burst events in the entire universe. Of course, the theory could be wrong.
This quote from the article essentially sums up a current leading theory on the cause of frbs. A good image is also in the article. The theory derives from work done studying the downward intensities of nuclear explosion blasts. Very cool. But still surprising that something so young (a magnetar) having merely an ejection in its own magnetized field surrounded by plasma could create one of the most intense (albeit short lived) radio burst events in the entire universe. Of course, the theory could be wrong.