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Caption
This is a collage of 4 images including two animations:
Top left: Binary-neutron-star merger (credit: Dana Berry, Skyworks Digital)
Top right: Supernova (credit: G. Bacon, STScI)
Bottom left: Magnetar (credit Robert S. Mallozzi, UAH/NASA MSFC)
Bottom right: Blck-hole accretion event (credit: M. Weiss, NASA/CXC)
This image collection shows four models of powerful cosmic events that might have produced the fast radio burst FRB 131104. Two common fast-radio-burst models that predict accompanying gamma-ray emission invoke magnetar flares or binary-neutron-star mergers. A magnetar is a highly magnetized neutron star, the dense remnant of a collapsed star. Binary-neutron-star mergers occur when two neutron stars spiral together and merge, forming a black hole. Two cosmic sources of bright and long-lived gamma-ray emission, not known to produce fast radio bursts, are supermassive-black-hole accretion events and some types of supernovae. A black-hole accretion event occurs when a star comes too close to the supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy. A supernova occurs when a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel; its core collapses and the star explodes, shining for a month or more with the light of ten billion stars.
Credit
Top left: Binary-neutron-star merger (credit: Dana Berry, Skyworks Digital)
Top right: Supernova (credit: G. Bacon, STScI)
Bottom left: Magnetar (credit Robert S. Mallozzi, UAH/NASA MSFC)
Bottom right: Blck-hole accretion event (credit: M. Weiss, NASA/CXC)
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The image credits must be published along with the images.