Science Snapshots: Galaxy Pileup!

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Your local highway after the smallest bit of snow isn't the only place where pileups can happen. Galaxies can do it too!

It all started with a strong fast radio burst. The strongest we've known, in fact. What the hell is that? A fast radio burst is a radio pulse that comes and goes (transient) lasting anywhere from a fraction of a millisecond to three seconds. We don't know what causes them. And they're strong. The average fast radio burst releases about as much energy in one millisecond (a one-thousandth of a second) as our Sun does in three full days. Of course, they (thankfully) are much less strong by the time they make it here. Learn more on Wikipedia, the king of all sources.

Alexa Gordon from Northwestern University (a legit place to study astronomy and astrophysics, by the way) says the current thought is they are caused by very compact objects, like a magnetar. These are a type of neutron star with very powerful magnetic fields. A neutron star is the collapsed center of a supergiant star, which is just what it sounds like. A big ass star.

Back to the all powerful burst, which is called FRB 20220610A because it rolls off the tongue. Dr. Gordon's team was checking out the source of this burst when they found a group of seven galaxies about 11 billion light years from Earth that were so jammed up that all seven of them could fit inside our Milky Way galaxy. This is a unique find as usually these bursts are seen from lone galaxies or globular clusters, but not such a galactic orgy.

Dr. Gordon's next move is for her team to get some time on the James Webb telescope to look in detail in hopes of finding a magnetar. The swapping of gas, dust, and other materials (ha) often trigger the birth of new stars (as we all know), so it's possible a supermassive star was born and collapsed into such a magnetar.

The Galactic Orgy of Seven. Source: NASA, ESA, STSCI, Alex Gordon/Northwestern via ScienceNews

Read the article here: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fast-radio-burst-traced-galaxy-merge

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