Astronomy

A strange ‘chirp’ in a brilliant stellar blast points to a magnetar

The unusual supernova signal may reveal what powers the universe’s brightest stellar blasts

An illustration shows a bright jet of energy blasting from the center of a glowing, tilted disk of gas and dust swirling around a compact star in space.

An extreme star called a magnetar, surrounded by a wobbling accretion disk (illustrated), may have created a never-before-seen signal recently detected by astronomers.

Joseph Farah and Curtis McCully

By Jay Bennett

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