ANNAPOLIS, Md. — It takes a powerful beast to unleash a gamma-ray burst, the most energetic type of explosion since the Big Bang. But the exact nature of the cosmic powerhouse that generates the ...

“A minor point of interest regarding the Spitler Burst.” The email subject line popped up on Shami Chatterjee’s computer screen just after 3 in the afternoon on Nov. 5, 2015. When Chatterjee read the ...

NASA's Hubble Telescope sees a flash of light 10 times brighter than expected... what was it? Perhaps the birth of a magnetar. Jackson Ryan was CNET's science editor, and a multiple award-winning one ...

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Magnetars are among ...

In October 2020, a highly magnetic neutron star called SGR 1935+2154 abruptly began spinning more slowly. Astrophysicist now show the magnetar's rotational slowdown could have been caused by a volcano ...

Magnetars are extremely dense and highly magnetic neutron stars that can form when a star goes supernova. They are extremely rare, and until now, it has been difficult to determine how and why they ...

In 2013, astronomers announced they had discovered a magnetar exceptionally close to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way using a suite of space-borne telescopes including NASA’s ...

Astronomers have discovered a new kind of star, and with it, a new clue to an old mystery: how magnetars form. The discovery is related to a peculiar star in a binary system some 3,000 light-years ...