Free Republic

The object, named FRB 20201124A, was detected with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) in China and described in a new paper led by astronomer Heng Xu of Peking University in China. So far most evidence points to a magnetar – a neutron star with extraordinarily strong magnetic fields – as a source of FRB emissions like this. If FRB 20201124A is indeed from one of these wild cosmic beasts, it's looking like an unusual specimen. Polarization refers to the orientation of light waves in three-dimensional space. By examining how much that orientation has changed since the light departed...