Astrophysicists managed to identify the location of the source of the fast radio burst, which was named FRB 20200120E.
The new radio burst is located at a distance of 11.7 million light years: previously, these objects have not been detected so close. It is 40 times closer than other known extragalactic signals. And it is coming from a strange place – not from where one would expect a signal from FRB stars, from a cluster of very old stars.
Fast radio bursts, from the English. Fast Radio Bursts (FRB) – single radio pulses of unknown nature recorded by radio telescopes with a duration of several milliseconds.
In a new study, the authors argue that FRB 20200120E does indeed come from the globular cluster M81, that is, the mechanism for the formation of fast radio bursts is broader than previously assumed.
Because such globular clusters contain old stellar populations, this association challenges FRB models, which use magnetars formed in a core collapse supernova as the source of FRB radiation.
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The authors suggested that the source of radio bursts may not be a magnetar, but a low-mass X-ray binary system, such as a white dwarf and a neutron star, or a neutron star and an exoplanet.
Because globular clusters are so dense, stars in them can interact and even collide with each other, creating objects such as low-mass X-ray binaries and pulsars.
