From the Editor's Desk

A Dead Star in a Nearby Galaxy Just Did Something Wild

A magnetar in galaxy M82 recently sent a huge burst of gamma rays and other radiation blasting out into space. Magnetars are the burned-out, collapsed cores of massive stars, wrapped in the strongest magnetic fields in the universe. And sometimes, the restless shifting of those immensely powerful magnetic fields releases a huge blast of energy: a giant flare, bright enough to be seen tens of millions of light-years away.

In the last 50 years, astronomers have seen one of these dramatic flares just three times, and never in another galaxy – until recently. Astrophysicist Sandro Mereghetti and his colleagues published their work in the journal Nature.

Continued here

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