A dense, magnetic star erupted and spat out a billion suns in a fraction of a second.
A magnetar is a star with a strong magnetic field that can flare spectacularly. Even though magnetars can be thousands of times brighter than our sun, their eruptions are so brief and unpredictable that it's difficult for astrophysicists to find and study them.
Researchers recently caught one of these flares and calculated the brightness of a magnetar as it erupted. According to a statement translated from Spanish, the scientists found that the distant magnetar released as much energy as our sun does in 100,000 years.
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A massive star collapses at the end of its life and creates a neutron star. A compressed solar mass is created when the star dies in a supernova, as it is crushed into a mass of protons and electrons. The result is a star that is between 1.3 and 2.5 solar mass and is crammed into a sphere that is 20 kilometers in diameter.
The amount of matter in a sugar cube is so dense that it would weigh more than a billion tons and the star's gravity is so strong that a passing marshmallows would hit it.
Magnetars are more powerful than any other magnetic object in the universe, and they are also 1,000 times stronger than other neutron stars. Our sun is pale in comparison to the stars even when they aren't erupting, according to the study lead author.
Magnetars can be 100,000 times more bright than the sun. The energy that was released is equivalent to the sun's energy in 100,000 years.
A big flare.
The study's co-author, Victor Reglero, director of UV's Image Processing Laboratory, said that the SculptorGalaxy is a spiral galaxy about 13 million light-years from Earth and is a true Cosmic monster. The giant flare was detected by the ASIM instrument on the International Space Station.
The researchers were able to analyze the brief, violent energy surge with the help of artificial intelligence, which detected the flare and then decayed it so quickly that it was almost indistinguishable from the data. The authors of the study spent more than a year analyzing ASIM's two seconds of data collection, dividing the event into four phases based on the magnetar's energy output, and then measuring the star's magnetic field when it was at its peak.
It's almost as if the magnetar decided to broadcast its existence "from its cosmic solitude" by shouting into the void of space with the force of a billion suns.
This is the most distant magnetar flare that has been detected to date, and it is the only one that has been identified from a large number of known stars. This rare observation could help researchers understand the stresses that produce magnetars' energy burps, as scientists suspect that eruptions such as this one may be caused by so-called starquakes that disrupt magnetars' elastic outer layers.
Live Science published the original article.
