These Brilliant Flares Originate from Young, Massive Galaxies.
They come from anywhere in the sky: mysterious flashes of radio energy that disappear in the blink of an eye. They're called fast radio bursts (FRBs), and astronomers have spotted roughly 1,000 of them over the past 20 years. But they come and go so quickly that researchers have only been able to trace about 15 of them to their home galaxies, all are massive and far from Earth. After that, their trail runs cold. Astronomers haven't been able to track the bursts to the neighborhoods where the radio waves were beamed. Their location could offer clues to the cause of one of the most enigmatic events in modern astronomy.
Astronomers are now using the Hubble Space Telescope as an intergalactic sleuth on the trail of this cosmic mystery. With Hubble they have tracked five FRBs to the spiral arms of five distant galaxies. But surprisingly, these powerful events don't come from the brightest regions, which blaze with the light from hefty stars. These clues help researchers rule out several possible explanations for the brilliant flares, such as the explosive deaths of the youngest, most massive stars. The researchers' results favor an increasingly popular theory, that the bursts come from magnetars, intensely magnetic remnants of collapsed dead stars.
Find additional articles, images, and videos at HubbleSite.org
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