News: Intense pulses of radio waves known as fast radio bursts (FRB) have been found in the Milky Way for the first time.
Facts:
- What are Fast Radio Bursts(FRB): These are bright bursts of radio waves (radio waves can be produced by astronomical objects with changing magnetic fields) whose durations lie in the millisecond-scale, because of which it is difficult to detect them and determine their position in the sky.
- Who discovered it? It was detected by several satellites including NASA’s Wind mission and Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), a radio telescope located in British Columbia.
- Source of FRBs: The study has suggested that magnetars could be the source of some fast radio bursts(FRBs).
- Significance: The FRB was the closest signal ever recorded near the Earth.It was also 3,000 times brighter than any other magnetar radio signal detected till now.
Additional Facts:
- Magnetar: It is a type of neutron star.The magnetic field of such a star is very powerful, which can be over 10 trillion times stronger than a refrigerator magnet and up to a thousand times stronger than a typical neutron star’s.
- Neutron: Neutron stars are formed when the core of a massive star undergoes gravitational collapse when it reaches the end of its life.
