๐ A supernova "chirped" at us โ and it turned out to be the first-ever magnetar birth caught live
Astronomers traced a strange repeating chirp in the light curve of supernova SN 2024afav to Lense-Thirring precession โ spacetime itself being dragged by a newborn, rapidly-spinning neutron star. The magnetar spins once every 4.2 milliseconds and carries a magnetic field roughly 300 trillion times stronger than Earth"s. The findings, published in Nature, confirm a long-debated theory that magnetars power the universe"s most luminous stellar explosions. What else might the cosmos be quietly signaling that we"ve been missing?
โก 47 buzzing
433 views
๐ 0 subscribed