Space mystery: Terrifying cosmic burst unleashes 114 blasts in just 1 hour, leaving Indian scientists stunned, here's what exactly happened

Indian astronomers have detected a rare phenomenon from a pulsar, providing important insight to understand this mysterious feature. The Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in Pune captured a giant pulse emission of 114 exceptionally bright signals in an hour from a rare kind of pulsar. Further, the scientists say that this pulsar is a transitional millisecond pulsar which is one of only a handful known to exist. Advertisement Neutron star that rotates hundreds of times per second A neutron star is what remains of a massive star that has ended its life cycle by exploding as a supernova. An extremely dense and highly magnetized neutron star can sometimes emit a beam of radiation from its magnetic poles as it rotates creating a pulsar. In the case of the newly discovered pulsar, PSR J1227-4853, one rotation takes only 1.69 milliseconds making it a millisecond pulsar that spins around 600 times per second. Advertisement But what makes this pulsar special is that it is a transitional millisecond pulsar. These kinds of pulsars switch from being an X-ray binary to a radio pulsar. Astronomers worldwide have only discovered 3 transitional millisecond pulsars till date, of which this is the second observed to exhibit giant pulses. Advertisement The astronomers analyzed 174 hours of GMRT data acquired over nearly five years. They were able to identify 235 pulses from the noise of 174 hours of audio data. Of these 235 pulses, the team then isolated 114 bright giant pulses from the ordinary ones. Brightest signal was 10,000 times more intense than the average pulse Saptarshi Sarkar, an astronomer at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, led the research team. He explains that the giant pulses came from two distinct sources or 'hotspots' on the pulsar. While analyzing the data, the astronomers discovered that the giant pulses were not randomly distributed across the source. Advertisement They then tried to see how the giant pulses from the two hotspots differed. They found that one of the hotspots had a narrow profile, and the other had a wider profile. The pulses showed that the width varied from 1.1 to 3.3 microseconds. But the strongest pulse had a width of 1.28 microseconds. Advertisement In addition, the astronomers say that the second hotspot produced more intense signals than the first. Further, the authors note that the 114 giant pulses observed for PSR J1227-4853 in an hour is unusual since, till date, no other transitional millisecond pulsar has been observed to show such startling activity. Advertisement This finding may finally help astronomers understand what causes FRBs Perhaps the astronomers' greatest insight is that they might finally understand what causes Fast Radio Bursts or FRBs. FRBs are intense but short-lived radio signals that originate in outer space. The cause of these bright pulses is still unknown, though astronomers worldwide are trying to observe more FRBs to find out their origin. Advertisement It is believed that some signals come from highly magnetized neutron stars. Further, of the many FRBs detected, some appear to be repeating while others do not. Sarkar added that the new finding may provide a vital hint to unravel the mystery of FRBs. Advertisement 'We see a resemblance between the behaviour of this pulsar and some repeating FRBs,' said Sarkar. Although the new finding does not conclusively show that transitional millisecond pulsars cause FRBs, these discoveries add up to the astronomers' knowledge about giant pulses. Therefore, astronomers can now study these rare and bright signals to see if they appear to have any connection with FRBs. Advertisement Further, the finding is significant since it helps Indian radio astronomers understand the significance of GMRT. The GMRT telescope proved to be an excellent tool for observing objects in space like these rare pulsars which are challenging to study.