Roughly one thousand wildly powerful bursts of radio energy have been detected and just fifteen of them have been linked to a galaxy – spiral galaxies, in fact. The Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), which last seconds or even fractions of a second, aren’t associated with the bright star-forming regions of galaxies, where stars are young. This supports the theory that Fast Radio Bursts come from old dead stars, like neutron stars with massive magnetic fields, called magnetars. According to team member Wen-fai Fong: We don’t know what causes FRBs, so it’s really important to use context when we have it. 

In this case, the context rules out massive young stars. Fong goes on to add: Massive stars go through stellar evolution and become neutron stars, some of which can be strongly magnetized, leading to flares and magnetic processes on their surfaces, which can emit radio light. Our study fits in with that picture.

More Information

NASA press release

“A High-Resolution View of Fast Radio Burst Host Environments,” Alexandra G. Mannings et al., to be published in The Astrophysical Journal (preprint on arxiv.org)