Invisible Lighthouse: Magnetar Pulse in a Gamma-Ray Burst ⚡ экспресс
When neutron stars merge, they usually give birth to a black hole, but sometimes a super-dense magnetic top — a magnetar — can form. Scientists found rhythmic pulses in a gamma-ray burst at 909 times per second, similar to such a top's spin. Could this be a real 'cosmic lighthouse,' flickering in X-rays?
Some cosmic explosions—gamma-ray bursts—last just a couple of seconds, but GRB 230307A glowed for several minutes. Usually such an explosion gives birth to a black hole, but the prolonged glow hinted at a different outcome: perhaps a magnetar emerged—a hyper-magnetized neutron star spinning at a furious rate.
Telescopes caught a fleeting rhythmic signal in this burst—like the beam of a distant lighthouse momentarily sweeping over Earth. The frequency of 909 hertz means 909 rotations per second: a typical tempo for a newborn pulsar. The signal lasted just 160 milliseconds, shorter than a blink, but in that time the magnetar released as much energy as the Sun does in a million years.
This ‘lighthouse’ signal confirms for the first time that it is a neutron star, not a black hole, that can power long gamma-ray bursts. Such observations will help unravel how the most extreme engines in the Universe work.
🎯 A neutron star is the core of a dead star, compressed to the size of a city: a teaspoon of its material would weigh billions of tons.
🎬 In the novel 'Dragon's Egg', Robert Forward imagined life on the surface of a neutron star, where monstrous gravity speeds up time thousands of times.