The Violent Birth of a Magnetar

NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has captured the first definitive evidence of high-energy gamma rays coming from a superluminous supernova — one of the most powerful stellar explosions in the universe.Scientists studying the event SN 2017egm believe its extraordinary brightness is driven by a newborn magnetar, an ultra-dense neutron star spinning at extreme speeds with an intense magnetic field.The discovery helps explain how these explosions generate enormous amounts of energy and offers a new way to study the physics of collapsing massive stars and the extreme environments created in their aftermath.Thank you for listening to Bedtime Astronomy — your guide to the cosmos. New episodes on space exploration, NASA missions & the latest astronomy breakthroughs.This episode includes AI-generated content.