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 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

About a billion light-years away, an extraordinary stellar explosion lit up in the night sky. The blast, detected December 12, 2024, was some 30 times the brightness of a typical supernova, putting it in a rare group of superluminous supernovas.