A dead neutron star just screamed out a radio burst bright enough to be seen from across the galaxy.
Neutron stars are categorized into groups based on whether they emit radio waves or stay quiet, and this specific star was firmly in the quiet camp. This massive, wideband burst proves that even supposedly dormant stars can release violent pulses of energy without warning. The discovery suggests that there are millions of these hidden emitters scattered throughout space that we previously ignored. It changes the entire map of how these stellar remnants evolve and release energy into the cosmos. Scientists will now have to re-evaluate every silent object in the sky to see if they are actually ticking time bombs of radio energy.
A bright wideband radio burst from the isolated neutron star 2XMM J104608.7$-$594306
arXiv · 2605.00720
We present the discovery of a second coherent radio burst from the thermally emitting neutron star 2XMM J104608.7$-$594306 in our follow-up observations with the Murriyang Ultra-Wideband Low receiver. This burst shows complex morphology with multiple components and wideband emission spanning from 704 to 4032MHz. We measured a steep spectral index of $\alpha=-2.18\pm0.16$. Our polarimetric analysis demonstrates that the burst is highly polarised with a linear and circular polarisation fraction of