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An exceptionally bright flare from SGR 1806–20 and the origins of short-duration γ-ray bursts

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Hurley, K., Boggs, S. E., Smith, D. M., Duncan, R. C., Lin, R., Zoglauer, A., Krucker, S., Hurford, G., Hudson, H., Wigger, C., Hajdas, W., Thompson, C., Mitrofanov, I., Sanin, A., Boynton, W., Fellows, C., von Kienlin, A., Lichti, G., Rau, A., Cline, T.·2005·Nature

Abstract

Soft-γ-ray repeaters (SGRs) are galactic X-ray stars that emit numerous short-duration (about 0.1 s) bursts of hard X-rays during sporadic active periods. They are thought to be magnetars: strongly magnetized neutron stars with emissions powered by the dissipation of magnetic energy. Here we report the detection of a long (380 s) giant flare from SGR 1806–20, which was much more luminous than any previous transient event observed in our Galaxy. (In the first 0.2 s, the flare released as much energy as the Sun radiates in a quarter of a million years.) Its power can be explained by a catastrophic instability involving global crust failure and magnetic reconnection on a magnetar, with possible large-scale untwisting of magnetic field lines outside the star. From a great distance this event would appear to be a short-duration, hard-spectrum cosmic γ-ray burst. At least a significant fraction of the mysterious short-duration γ-ray bursts may therefore come from extragalactic magnetars.

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Metadata

Authors
Hurley, K., Boggs, S. E., Smith, D. M., Duncan, R. C., Lin, R., Zoglauer, A., Krucker, S., Hurford, G., Hudson, H., Wigger, C., Hajdas, W., Thompson, C., Mitrofanov, I., Sanin, A., Boynton, W., Fellows, C., von Kienlin, A., Lichti, G., Rau, A., & Cline, T.
Venue
Nature
Published
2005-04
Volume
434
Issue
7037
Pages
1098-1103
ISSN
  • 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
  • 1476-4687
OpenAlex
W1534966610
Cited by
597
References
0
FWCI
33.19
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: An exceptionally bright flare from SGR 1806–20 and the origins of short-duration γ-ray bursts. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1038/nature03519
The paper
Hurley, K., Boggs, S. E., Smith, D. M., Duncan, R. C., Lin, R., Zoglauer, A., Krucker, S., Hurford, G., Hudson, H., Wigger, C., Hajdas, W., Thompson, C., Mitrofanov, I., Sanin, A., Boynton, W., Fellows, C., von Kienlin, A., Lichti, G., Rau, A., & Cline, T. (2005). An exceptionally bright flare from SGR 1806–20 and the origins of short-duration γ-ray bursts. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03519

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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