Far out in the Milky Way, 21,000 light-years from Earth, astronomers have discovered the fastest rotating magnetic star (and possibly the smallest as well) ever. And this is just the beginning of what makes this star so weird.
Magnetic She is a unique kind of Neutron stars, Which are the collapsed cores of giant stars that died in supernova events. What distinguishes magnetic stars from other neutron stars is that they have extremely strong magnetic fields – the strongest fields in the known universe, in fact. They can also explode without warning and be difficult to spot. In fact, before this object was discovered, there were only 30 known magnetic stars, compared to the thousands (about 3,000) known neutron stars.
Now, scientists study the sky with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory – A space telescope observing black holes, supernovae and more – I think the newly discovered magnetic star known as J1818.0-1607 could be the fastest rotating star and maybe also the smallest known magnetic star, According to a statement. They also found countless other strange things that make this object truly unique.
Photo Gallery: Stunning Photos by NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory
Astronomers discovered this magnetic star for the first time on March 12, 2020 NASA’s Neel Girells Swift Telescope. Later, Harsha Plumer, an astronomer at West Virginia University, and Samar Safi Harb, a professor of physics at the University of Manitoba in Canada, noticed the magnet using Chandra, and they noticed some strange things that made the magnets prominent.
One of the first things that seemed interesting about this particular thing was how young he was. The team estimated that the magnetic star is about 500 years old, and if true, it would be the youngest ever discovered. They determined the age of the object by measuring how quickly the magnetic star’s rate of rotation was slowing down (spinning slower over time) assuming the object began to spin faster.
The second thing that really stood out for the team was how fast the object was spinning, as it seemed to spin once fully every 1.4 seconds (which is really, really fast).
Other astronomers took a look at J1818.0-1607 as well, and observed the magnetar using radio telescopes like the National Science Foundation’s Karl Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) and found that it emits radio waves, a quality it shares with known things like „pulsars that“ Rotating. “ These are the type of neutron star that emits radiation that we discover on Earth as „pulses“ of radio wave emissions.
Blumer and Safi-Harb also discovered that a magnet does not convert the spin energy from its spin to X-ray emissions as efficiently as would be expected for a magnetic star. In fact, the body converts this energy at a more common rate with energy circulating Pulsars, Another interesting commonality between the two objects.
The last strange thing the researchers found about this fast young star is that while most magnetic stars around this age have left behind a debris field of material remnants from the supernova that created the body, researchers have only found evidence of possible supernova remnant with J1818.0-1607. , And this debris was too far from the body.
According to their estimates, in order for the debris field to travel farther from the magnetar, an object would have to move faster than ever with a neutron star.
this work Accepted for publication In The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Email Chelsea Gohd at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
„Organizátor. Spisovateľ. Zlý kávičkár. Evanjelista všeobecného jedla. Celoživotný fanúšik piva. Podnikateľ.“
