Credit: RUVID
A worldwide scientific group with outstanding Valencian involvement has managed to determine for the very first time oscillations in the brightness of a neutron star– magnetar– during its most violent moments. In just a tenth of a second, the magnetar launched energy equivalent to that produced by the Sun in 100,000 years. The observation has been brought out instantly, without human intervention, thanks to the Artificial Intelligence of a system developed at the Image Processing Laboratory (IPL) of the University of Valencia.
Among the neutron stars, objects that can consist of half a million times the mass of the Earth in a size of about twenty kilometers, stands apart a small group with the most intense magnetic field understood: magnetars. These things, of which only thirty are understood, suffer violent eruptions that are still unfamiliar due to their unanticipated nature and their duration of barely tenths of a second. Spotting them is a challenge for science and innovation.
A global clinical group with impressive participation from the University of Valencia has released just recently in the journal Nature the study of the eruption of a magnetar in information: they have managed to measure oscillations– pulses– in the brightness of the magnetar during its most violent moments. These episodes are an important component in comprehending huge magnetar eruptions. It is a question long discussed throughout the previous twenty years that today has a response, if there are high-frequency oscillations in the magnetars.
The work has the contribution of six scientists from the University of Valencia and a high Spanish participation– 15 researchers out of an overall of 41. “Even in a non-active state, magnetars can be one hundred thousand times more luminous than our Sun, but when it comes to the flash that we have studied– the GRB2001415– the energy that was released is comparable to that which our Sun radiates in one hundred thousand years,” explains lead researcher Alberto J. Castro-Tirado, from the IAA-CSIC.
” The surge of the magnetar, which lasted around a tenth of a 2nd, was found on April 15, 2020 in the midst of the pandemic,” says Víctor Reglero, professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the UV, researcher at the Image Processing Laboratory (IPL), co-author of the post and one of the architects of ASIM, the instrument aboard the International Space Station that found the eruption. “Since then we have actually established very intense data analysis work, considering that it was a 1016 Gauss neutron star and situated in another galaxy.
The scientific neighborhood believes that eruptions in magnetars might be due to instabilities in their magnetosphere or to a kind of “earthquakes” produced in their crust, a rigid and flexible layer about a kilometer thick. “Regardless of the trigger, a kind of waves is produced in the stars magnetosphere– the Alfvén– which are popular in the Sun and which connect with each other, dissipating energy,” discusses Alberto J. Castro-Tirado.
According to the study released now in Nature, the oscillations identified in the eruption are constant with the emission produced by the interaction between Alfvén waves, whose energy is quickly taken in by the crust. Therefore, in a couple of milliseconds the magnetic reconnection process ends and therefore likewise the pulses identified in GRB2001415, which vanished 3.5 milliseconds after the primary burst. The analysis of the phenomenon has made it possible to estimate that the volume of the eruption was comparable or even greater than that of the neutron star itself.
Algorithms of the University of Valencia capture it without human intervention
The eruption was identified by the ASIM instrument, which is on board the International Space Station (ISS). ASIM, where the University of Valencia takes part, was the only one of the seven telescopes efficient in registering the main stage of the eruption in its full energy range without suffering saturations. The clinical group was able to solve the temporal structure of the event, a truly intricate task that involved more than a year of analysis for simply 2 seconds throughout which the data was collected.
The Atmosphere Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) is an ESA mission established by Denmark, Norway, and Spain, which has been operational in the ISS given that 2018 under the guidance of researchers Torsten Neubert (Technical University of Denmark), Nikolai Ostgaard (University of Bergen, Norway) and Víctor Reglero (University of Valencia, Spain), who form the ASIM Facility Science Team.
ASIMs goal is to monitor violent phenomena in the Earths environment from Optical to Gamma Rays at 40 MeV, an activity that the telescope has actually been bring out considering that June 2018, having actually already spotted 1000 gamma-ray eruptions. “Given that these phenomena are unpredictable, ASIM decides completely autonomously when something has occurred and sends out the data to the various centers of the Science Data Centre in Copenhagen, Bergen and Valencia,” explains Víctor Reglero.
And, as it is associated sound, it is challenging to identify its signal,” details Reglero. The intelligence of the system that we have established at the University of Valencia is what has actually permitted, together with sophisticated information analysis techniques, to find this magnificent phenomenon.
Although these eruptions had actually already been spotted in two of the thirty known magnetars in our galaxy and in some other neighboring galaxies, GRB2001415 would be the most far-off magnetar eruption caught to date, remaining in the Sculptor group of galaxies about thirteen million light years. “Seen in perspective, it has been as if the magnetar desired to suggest its presence to us from its cosmic solitude, singing in the kHz with the force of a Pavarotti of a billion suns,” states Reglero.
According to the authors of the paper now released in Nature, this eruption has provided a vital component in comprehending how magnetic tensions are produced in and around a neutron star. Continuous monitoring of magnetars in close-by galaxies will assist to comprehend this phenomenon, and will likewise lead the way to a better understanding of fast radio bursts, presently among the most enigmatic phenomena in astronomy.
Recommendation: “Very-high-frequency oscillations in the main peak of a magnetar giant flare” by A. J. Castro-Tirado, N. Østgaard, E. Gögüs, C. Sánchez-Gil, J. Pascual-Granado, V. Reglero, A. Mezentsev, M. Gabler, M. Marisaldi, T. Neubert, C. Budtz-Jørgensen, A. Lindanger, D. Sarria, I. Kuvvetli, P. Cerdá-Durán, J. Navarro-González, J. A. Font, B.-B. Zhang, N. Lund, C. A. Oxborrow, S. Brandt, M. D. Caballero-García, I. M. Carrasco-García, A. Castellón, M. A. Castro Tirado, F. Christiansen, C. J. Eyles, E. Fernández-García, G. Genov, S. Guziy, Y.-D. Hu, A. Nicuesa Guelbenzu, S. B. Pandey, Z.-K. Peng, C. Pérez del Pulgar, A. J. Reina Terol, E. Rodríguez, R. Sánchez-Ramírez, T. Sun, K. Ullaland and S. Yang, 22 December 2021, Nature.DOI:
An international clinical group with outstanding Valencian involvement has actually managed to measure for the very first time oscillations in the brightness of a neutron star– magnetar– throughout its most violent minutes. An international scientific team with impressive involvement from the University of Valencia has actually published recently in the journal Nature the research study of the eruption of a magnetar in detail: they have actually handled to measure oscillations– pulses– in the brightness of the magnetar during its most violent minutes. These episodes are a vital component in understanding giant magnetar eruptions.” The explosion of the magnetar, which lasted around a tenth of a second, was found on April 15, 2020 in the midst of the pandemic,” says Víctor Reglero, teacher of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the UV, researcher at the Image Processing Laboratory (IPL), co-author of the article and one of the architects of ASIM, the instrument aboard the International Space Station that identified the eruption. Recommendation: “Very-high-frequency oscillations in the primary peak of a magnetar huge flare” by A. J. Castro-Tirado, N. Østgaard, E. Gögüs, C. Sánchez-Gil, J. Pascual-Granado, V. Reglero, A. Mezentsev, M. Gabler, M. Marisaldi, T. Neubert, C. Budtz-Jørgensen, A. Lindanger, D. Sarria, I. Kuvvetli, P. Cerdá-Durán, J. Navarro-González, J. A. Font, B.-B.
