'Cosmic monster' star spits energy with the force of a billion suns

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High energy outbursts in this type of neutron star — a magnetar — are thought to be caused by "starquakes."

A powerful X-ray burst erupts from a magnetar — a supermagnetized version of a stellar remnant known as a neutron star — in this illustration.
A powerful X-ray burst erupts from a magnetar — a supermagnetized version of a stellar remnant known as a neutron star — in this illustration. (Image credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA))

A dense, magnetic star violently erupted and spat out as much energy as a billion suns — and it happened in a fraction of a second, scientists recently reported.

This type of star, known as a magnetar, is a neutron star with an exceptionally strong magnetic field, and magnetars often flare spectacularly and without warning. But even though magnetars can be thousands of times brighter than our sun, their eruptions are so brief and unpredictable that they're challenging for astrophysicists to find and study.

"Even in an inactive state, magnetars can be 100,000 times more luminous than our sun," Castro-Tirado said. "But in the case of the flash that we have studied — GRB2001415 — the energy that was released is equivalent to that which our sun radiates in 100,000 years."

A "giant flare"

The magnetar that produced the brief eruption is located in the Sculptor Galaxy, a spiral galaxy about 13 million light-years from Earth, and is "a true cosmic monster," study co-author Victor Reglero, director of UV's Image Processing Laboratory, said in the statement. The giant flare was detected on April 15, 2020 by the Atmosphere–Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) instrument on the International Space Station, researchers reported Dec. 22 in the journal Nature.

Artificial intelligence (AI) in the ASIM pipeline detected the flare, enabling the researchers to analyze that brief, violent energy surge; the flare lasted just 0.16 seconds and then the signal decayed so rapidly that it was nearly indistinguishable from background noise in the data. The study authors spent more than a year analyzing ASIM's two seconds of data collection, dividing the event into four phases based on the magnetar's energy output, and then measuring variations in the star's magnetic field caused by the energy pulse when it was at its peak. 

It's almost as if the magnetar decided to broadcast its existence "from its cosmic solitude" by shouting into the void of space with the force "of a billion suns," Reglero said.

Only about 30 magnetars have been identified from approximately 3,000 known neutron stars, and this is the most distant magnetar flare detected to date. Scientists suspect that eruptions such as this one may be caused by so-called starquakes that disrupt magnetars' elastic outer layers, and this rare observation could help researchers unravel the stresses that produce magnetars' energy burps, according to the study.

Originally published on Live Science.

Mindy Weisberger
Mindy Weisberger
Live Science Contributor

Mindy Weisberger is a science journalist and author of "Rise of the Zombie Bugs: The Surprising Science of Parasitic Mind-Control" (Hopkins Press). She formerly edited for Scholastic and was a channel editor and senior writer for Live Science. She has reported on general science, covering climate change, paleontology, biology and space. Mindy studied film at Columbia University; prior to LS, she produced, wrote and directed media for the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. Her videos about dinosaurs, astrophysics, biodiversity and evolution appear in museums and science centers worldwide, earning awards such as the CINE Golden Eagle and the Communicator Award of Excellence. Her writing has also appeared in Scientific American, The Washington Post, How It Works Magazine and CNN.