MIT scientists uncover origins of fast radio burst in space

The team estimates that FRB 20221022A exploded from a region that is near a rotating neutron star.

Scientists with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) managed to nail down the source of a fast radio burst (FRB) in outer space on Wednesday (1 January). According to MIT, FRBs are “brief and brilliant explosions of radio waves emitted by extremely compact objects”, such as neutron stars and possibly even black holes.

Since the first-ever discovery of an FRB in 2007, astronomers have detected thousands of FRBs, whose locations range from within our own galaxy to as far as 8bn light-years away.

These types of space phenomena last for just a thousandth of a second and have the potential to possess an enormous amount of energy – enough to briefly outshine entire galaxies.

Just like many things in space, exactly how these cosmic radio flares are launched is a highly contested unknown.

But now, scientists are a bit closer to understanding the exact origins of FRBs, as the MIT team in question revealed their discovery in the journal Nature.

Dr Kenzie Nimmo, the lead author of the study who is also a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli’s Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, said: “In these environments of neutron stars, the magnetic fields are really at the limits of what the universe can produce.

“There’s been a lot of debate about whether this bright radio emission could even escape from that extreme plasma.”

Dr Kiyoshi Masui, associate professor of physics at MIT, added: “Around these highly magnetic neutron stars, also known as magnetars, atoms can’t exist – they would just get torn apart by the magnetic fields.

“The exciting thing here is, we find that the energy stored in those magnetic fields, close to the source, is twisting and reconfiguring such that it can be released as radio waves that we can see halfway across the universe.”

Importance of MIT’s findings

Scientists estimate that this particular FRB, which has been dubbed FRB 20221022A, exploded from a region that is extremely close to a rotating neutron star, 10,000km away at most, which is less than the distance between the cities of New York and Singapore.

This means that the burst likely emerged from the neutron star’s magnetosphere, which refers to a highly magnetic region immediately surrounding the ultracompact star, according to the scientists.

This is crucial information for scientists as their findings provide the first conclusive evidence that an FRB can originate from the magnetosphere.

In addition, the team set its sights on determining the precise location of the radio signal by analysing its “scintillation”, similar to how stars twinkle in the night sky.

After examining changes in the FRB in question’s brightness, it was determined that the burst must have originated from the immediate range of its source, rather than much further out, as some models have predicted.

MIT has also said that detections of FRBs have ramped up in recent years, due to the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment.

In October, MIT researchers made headlines when, along with scientists based in Caltech, they found two objects orbiting a black hole for the first time, leading them to question what they know about how black holes form.

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