Researchers believe that they have managed to fix a blitzar for the first time. To do this, they used data from the LIGO and VIRGO observatories, which monitor gravitational waves, as well as information from the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) project.

What is known

A blitzar is an event when a supermassive neutron star turns into a black hole. Usually it is kept from collapse by centrifugal forces. They are created due to the huge speed of rotation of the star. Centrifugal force prevents matter from falling beyond the event horizon.

In this case, the neutron star becomes a pulsar due to the enormous speed of rotation. However, after millions of years, the rotation slows down under the influence of a magnetic field. This leads to the fact that centrifugal forces cannot prevent the transformation of a neural star into a black hole. At this moment, the magnetic field is separated from the source. The energy forms a burst of radio emission of a wide energy spectrum. This is the Blitz.

Astronomers have studied data from LIGO, VIRGO and CHIME. They learned that of more than 20 neutron star mergers that were detected in gravitational waves, only one coincided with a rapid burst of radio emission.

According to scientists, the probability that the radio burst occurred in the region of the merger of stars is about 70%. In this case, the probability of a random coincidence is 0.004. The mass of neutron stars before the merger exceeded the mass of the Sun by 1.35 and 2 times. After the merger, an object of 3.2 masses of our star appeared.

Thus, scientists could record a blitzar for the first time in the history of mankind. However, it is impossible to be completely sure of this due to the meager history of observations.

Source: Ars Technica