{"id":182993,"date":"2024-02-18T03:25:56","date_gmt":"2024-02-18T09:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/astronomers-investigate-what-causes-bright-flashes-in-space"},"modified":"2024-02-18T03:25:56","modified_gmt":"2024-02-18T09:25:56","slug":"astronomers-investigate-what-causes-bright-flashes-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/astronomers-investigate-what-causes-bright-flashes-in-space","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers investigate what causes bright flashes in space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/astronomers-investigate-what-causes-bright-flashes-in-space2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Some of the oddest cosmic phenomena are short but tremendously powerful bursts of radio waves, which, in a fraction of a second, can give off as much energy as the sun does in a year. Known as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.digitaltrends.com\/space\/fast-radio-burst-milky-way\/\">fast radio bursts<\/a>, these incredibly bright flashes of energy are thought to be related to dying stars called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.digitaltrends.com\/space\/fast-radio-burst-repeating\/\">magnetars<\/a>. Now, using two separate telescopes, astronomers have observed one of these events just a few minutes before and after it occurred, giving the best look yet at what causes these strange events.<\/p>\n<p>Astronomers used NASA\u2019s NICER (Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer) on the International Space Station and NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) in low-Earth orbit to observe a magnetar called SGR 1935+2154. Magnetars are a type of neutron star, the dense core left behind after a star collapses and with an extremely strong magnetic field. In October 2022, this magnetar gave off one of these strange, fast radio bursts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some of the oddest cosmic phenomena are short but tremendously powerful bursts of radio waves, which, in a fraction of a second, can give off as much energy as the sun does in a year. Known as fast radio bursts, these incredibly bright flashes of energy are thought to be related to dying stars called [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[873,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nuclear-energy","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}