For us busy folks, the summary is right up front:
The fleeting cosmic firework likely emerged from the turbulent magnetosphere around a far-off neutron star.
Tldr; Astronomers have been debating whether FRBs come from the magnetosphere (a neutron star’s immediate, highly magnetic environment) or from shockwaves farther out. Using scintillation (similar to how stars twinkle), MIT researchers pinpointed FRB 20221022A’s origin to within 10,000 kilometers of a neutron star, proving it came from its magnetosphere.
Which is dumb because they are killing my hope it was aliens.
10000 kilometers on a cosmic scale is pretty accurate. A little too accurate, no?
Of course it’s going to be accurate, they used alien tech to track it
Hey, maybe a Type II civ is using the neutron star for energy and the FRBs are the equivalent of out gassing or exhaust.
These university press releases can sometimes be awful and full of hype/fluff, but this one is pretty good. It sufficiently explains the work without oversimplifying. Very cool to see we’ve narrowed the likely source of FRBs!
