LONDON: The biggest explosion in the universe, Gamma-ray bursts, was powered by magnetars, claims a new study.
Gamma-ray bursts are one of the outcomes associated with the biggest explosions to have taken place since the Big Bang.
GRBs usually only last a few seconds, but in very rare cases the gamma rays continue for hours. One such ultra-long duration GRB was picked up by the Swift satellite on 9 December 2011 and named GRB 111209A. It was both one of the longest and brightest GRBs ever observed.
The lead author, Jochen Greiner from the Max-Planck-Institut fur extraterrestrische Physik , Garching, Germany explained that since a long-duration gamma-ray burst is produced only once every 10 000-100 000 supernovae, the star that exploded must be somehow special.
The only explanation that fitted the observations of the supernova following GRB 111209A was that it was being powered by a magnetar — a tiny neutron star spinning hundreds of times per second and possessing a magnetic field much stronger than normal neutron stars, which are also known as radio pulsars.
Magnetars are thought to be the most strongly magnetised objects in the known Universe. This was the first time that such an unambiguous connection between a supernova and a magnetar has been possible.
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