An international team, with the assistance of ESA satellites, and including researchers from UNIGE, has detected a massive eruption emanating from a magnetar, an extremely magnetic neutron star.
As ESA’s satellite INTEGRAL scanned the skies, it detected a surge of gamma-rays emanating from the nearby galaxy M82. Shortly after this observation, ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope sought any residual glow from the event but detected nothing. An international research group, with contributors from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), concluded that the burst was an extragalactic flare from a magnetar, a young DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07285-4