Scientists have found more evidence linking rapid blasts of energy that are brighter than entire galaxies to highly magnetic dead stars or "magnetars." These neutron stars would have to possess winds of charged particles strong enough to inflate bubbles of surrounding super-heated ionized gas, or plasma.
Erupting and disappearing in milliseconds, these blasts, or fast radio bursts (FRBs), can emit as much energy in a fraction of a second that the sun releases in three days. Clearly, scientists are keen to determine the source of these powerful explosions of energy, but their origins have been frustratingly elusive since 2017, when the first FRB was found in data from the Parkes Observatory in Australia after being detected in 2001.
