Mysterious discovery in our galaxy broke theories and challenged scientists

Astronomers have discovered a "runaway star": a mysterious magnetar racing through the galaxy at incredible speed. An international team of researchers, analyzing data from the Hubble Space Telescope, has identified an unusual magnetar SGR 0501+4516, which is rapidly moving through the expanses of the Milky Way and has no connection to any known supernova remnant. The results of this amazing discovery have been published in the authoritative scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

According to classical theory, magnetars appear after a grand cosmic event - the explosion of a massive star, known as a supernova. However, the trajectory of SGR 0501+4516, carefully measured using the Hubble telescope and the space satellite Gaia, contradicts this traditional origin scenario.

The scientific community offers two intriguing versions of the appearance of this cosmic object: possibly, the magnetar formed as a result of a dramatic merger of two neutron stars, or emerged after the collapse of a white dwarf in a binary star system. In the second case, the white dwarf could have captured a critical amount of matter from its companion star and, bypassing the traditional supernova explosion phase, transform directly into a magnetar. These considerations were shared by Andrew Levan from Radboud University (Netherlands), one of the key participants in the research.

The significance of this discovery goes far beyond the study of an individual cosmic object - it could be the key to solving the origin of mysterious fast radio bursts, these powerful and brief signals coming from the depths of space. Magnetars formed in non-traditional ways potentially could explain the appearance of such mysterious bursts in ancient star clusters, where massive stars have long completed their life cycle.