A Canadian Telescope Helped Figure Out What's Causing Mysterious Radio Bursts From Space
There have been radio bursts from space detected for years and now a Canadian telescope helped astronomers figure out what's causing them to happen.
According to papers published in Nature, the likely cause of this is magnetars.
A magnetar is one type of neutron star that has an even stronger magnetic field than a typical neutron star which is already trillions of times stronger than Earth's.
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One sugar cube of neutron star material would weigh about 1 trillion kilograms (or 1 billion tons) on Earth – about as much as a mountain.
NASA
Astronomers used the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment radio telescope that's located close to Penticton, B.C. to figure that out.
The radio telescope detected "an extremely intense" burst from a magnetar in our galaxy.
It's believed that the repeated radio bursts, which are just millisecond-long radio waves, are from magnetars and powered by the stars' intense magnetic fields.
Neutron stars like magnetars form when a massive star collapses and they measure about 20 kilometres across which is about the size of a city according to NASA.
For comparison, Toronto is 21 kilometres from north to south.