Nearly 20 years ago, Santa Barbara astrophysicist Dr. Andy Howell was part of a team that discovered what’s called “superluminous supernovae,” the hyper-bright explosions of large dying stars. “At first, we didn’t know what they were,” Howell said. Regular supernovae were already among the brightest phenomena in the universe ― releasing as much energy in weeks or months as our sun will in its 10-billion-year lifetime ― but these eruptions were far more dazzling, by many orders of magnitude.
To help explain the mysterious and rare event ― only 100 or so have been observed since ― researchers developed the “magnetar model.” The theory went that a star’s violently collapsing core would sometimes create a magnetar, a rapidly spinning neutron star with a powerful magnetic field. (A neutron star is half a step away from a black hole, incredibly dense objects that cram the mass of the sun into a ball 10 miles wide.) As the magnetar spins, scientists thought, it acts like a battery and pumps energy into the expanding supernovae, increasing their intensity.
While the model could account for the astounding energies needed for superluminosity, Howell said, it could not explain the strange periodic bumps in brightness that researchers also observed. Most supernovae fade in a predictably smooth arc, but these explosions were displaying undulations ― or “chirps” ― of light that pointed to hidden physics taking place within the celestial bombs.