“It was unusual. Not only was it very long, lasting about three seconds, but there were extraordinarily precise periodic peaks, emissions every few fractions of a second – boom, boom, boom – like a heartbeat “ – observes the Italian researcher Daniele Michilli:
Graduated from Sapienza University of Rome, Michilli is now a postdoc researcher at the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research at MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and leads the team that studied Frb 20191221A ( where the prefix Frb stands for fast radio burst, or fast radio flash ) a signal picked up by the Chime ( Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment , a radio telescope located in British Columbia, Canada). And also in this case the results were published in Nature as well as the “repeating” one reported in 2018 thatit even allowed him to get a cover of Nature . The recorded signal is millions of times brighter than that produced by a common pulsar than those present in the Milky Way, capturing the imagination of experts and enthusiasts:
An extraterrestrial signal? Better not to venture: a possible scientific explanation would refer to a pulsar or a magnetar with above-average capacities. A pulsar, a name that originally stood for pulsating radio source, is a neutron star. In the early stages of its formation, in which it rotates very quickly, its electromagnetic radiation in confined cones is observed as pulses emitted at extremely regular intervals. A magnetar, on the other hand, is a neutron star that has an enormous magnetic field, billions of times that of the Earth, whose decay generates intense and abundant electromagnetic emissions, in particular X-rays, gamma rays and even radio frequencies.
Source: https://www.media.inaf.it/2022/07/14/frb-20191221a/
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