undefinedMagnetars, highly magnetized stellar corpses like the one illustrated here, could be the source of two different cosmic enigmas: fast radio bursts and high-energy neutrinos, a new study suggests. DRACO-ZLAT/ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES PLUS

The elusive particles would be hard to catch, but they’d be a smoking gun, researchers say

By Lisa Grossman, SEPTEMBER 16, 2020 

For over a decade, astronomers have puzzled over the origins of fast radio bursts, brief blasts of radio waves that come mostly from distant galaxies. During that same period, scientists have also detected high-energy neutrinos, ghostly particles from outside the Milky Way whose origins are also unknown.

A new theory suggests that the two enigmatic signals could come from a single cosmic source: highly active and magnetized neutron stars called magnetars. If true, that could fill in the details of how fast radio bursts, or FRBs, occur. However, finding the “smoking gun” — catching a simultaneous neutrino and radio burst from the same magnetar — will be challenging because such neutrinos would be rare and hard to find, says astrophysicist Brian Metzger of Columbia University. He and his colleagues described the idea in a study posted September 1 at arXiv.org.

Even so, “this paper gives a possible link between what I think are two of the most exciting mysteries in astrophysics,” says astrophysicist Justin Vandenbroucke of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who hunts for neutrinos but was not involved in the new work.

 

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