Radio bursts from among the oldest stars

Ravi, Vikram

doi:10.1038/d41586-022-00465-0

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23 February 2022

Radio bursts from among the oldest stars

Luminous bursts of radio emission are linked to highly magnetized neutron stars known as magnetars. Now, bursts have been detected from a globular star cluster, an environment thought to be devoid of magnetars.

Vikram Ravi⁰

Vikram Ravi
1. Vikram Ravi is in the Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA.
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If you were to look up at the sky with radio goggles, you would notice bright flashes at random locations roughly once every minute. Over the past 15 years, astronomers have detected more than 600 sources of such bursts, which have a range of luminosities, durations and rates of repetition. More than 20 sources have now been traced to specific galaxies, the diversity of which is similarly astounding. But such varied observations have not yet produced incisive insights into the burst mechanism. Now, in a paper in Nature, Kirsten et al.¹ report a surprising source of extragalactic radio bursts among some of the Universe’s oldest stars, and, in Nature Astronomy, Nimmo et al.² provide a detailed analysis of these bursts. The discovery differs from previous findings of sources among young stars, and challenges ideas on the formation of magnetars — the most magnetized objects in the Universe.

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Nature 602, 583-584 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00465-0

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