Milky way today has an incredible premiere announced by the researchers who monitor very carefully what is happening in our galaxy, and we are talking about an achievement that few thought possible. The researchers managed, for the first time, to measure the distance to a magnetar in the Milky Way, that is, a type of neutron star that has a very strong magnetic field, and that emits radio pulses at various time periods.
Milky way it has inside it a magnetar called XTE J1810-197, which was discovered in 2003 by scientists, emitting radio pulses for 5 years, after which it took a break for a decade. In 2018, he resumed his activity, and came back to the attention of scientists, who now even managed to measure the distance to him, something that was not thought possible until now, but an extremely important achievement, in the end.
Milky Way: INCREDIBLE Premiere Announced by Researchers
Milky way it has a lot of objects inside it, but only 6 magnetars have been discovered so far, and to calculate the distance to the one we are talking about now, the researchers had to become quite inventive. More precisely, they looked at the position that this magnetar had in relation to other objects behind it, and based on the movements of the earth around the sun, they managed to calculate the distance to it, a first for the Milky Way.
"This is the first parallax measurement for a magnetar. It shows that it is among the nearest known magnetars – about 8100 light-years away – making it a prime target for future study. Having a precise distance to this magnetar means we can accurately calculate the strength of the radio pulses coming from it. If it emits something similar to an FRB, we'll know how strong that pulse is. FRBs vary in their strength, so we would like to know if a magnetar pulse approaches or overlaps the strength of known FRBs."
Milky way it is vast, but this magnetar would be only 8100 light-years away from the Earth, a distance that seems great, but which in reality is small if we think about how vast is the universe in which we live. This calculation can be the basis of even more important discoveries vis-à-vis other objects in the Milky Way, but researchers must pay attention to what is happening around the Earth, and the sun, in order to be able to make calculations as much as possible of exact.
Milky way it has slowly, little by little, more and more mysteries revealed, and this will help us to understand much better everything that happens around us, but we still remain insignificant in the vast universe.
