2023-10-31 11:55:46
The “bones” of a ghostly cosmic hand – NASA
MADRID, 31 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Two NASA space X-ray telescopes have combined their imaging powers to reveal the “bones” of NASA’s magnetic field. a remarkable hand-shaped structure in space.
Together, these telescopes reveal the behavior of a collapsed dead star surviving through particle columns of energized matter and antimatter.
About 1,500 years ago, a giant star in our galaxy ran out of nuclear fuel to burn. When this happened, the star collapsed in on itself and formed an extremely dense object called a neutron star.
Rotating neutron stars with strong magnetic fields, or pulsars, provide laboratories for extreme physics, with conditions that cannot be replicated on Earth. Young pulsars can create jets of matter and antimatter that move away from the pulsar’s poles, along with a strong wind, forming a “pulsar wind nebula”.
In 2001, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory first observed the pulsar PSR B1509-58 and revealed that its pulsar wind nebula (known as MSH 15-52) looks like a human hand. The pulsar is located at the base of the “palm” of the nebula. MSH 15-52 is located 16,000 light years from Earth.
Now, NASA’s newest X-ray telescope, the Imaging of 2021.
“The IXPE data gives us the first map of the magnetic field in the ‘hand,'” he said. it’s a statement Roger Romani of Stanford University in California, who led the study. “The charged particles that produce the X-rays travel along the magnetic field, determining the basic shape of the nebula, much like the bones in a person’s hand do.”
IXPE provides information about the orientation of the X-ray electric field, determined by the magnetic field of the X-ray source. This is called X-ray polarization. In large regions of MSH 15-52 the amount of polarization is remarkably high, reaching the maximum expected level of theoretical work. To achieve that force, the magnetic field must be very straight and uniform, meaning there is little turbulence in those regions of the pulsar wind nebula.
“We are all familiar with X-rays as a medical diagnostic tool for humans,” said co-author Josephine Wong, also of Stanford. “Here we use X-rays in a different way, but again they reveal information that would otherwise be hidden from us.”
A particularly interesting feature of MSH 15-52 is a bright X-ray jet directed from the pulsar to the “doll” at the bottom of the image. The new IXPE data reveal that the polarization at the start of the jet is low, probably because it is a turbulent region with complex and entangled magnetic fields associated with the generation of high-energy particles. At the end of the jet, the magnetic field lines appear to straighten out and become much more uniform, which makes the polarization much greater.
These results imply that the particles receive an energy boost in complex turbulent regions near the pulsar at the base of the palm, and flow toward areas where the magnetic field is uniform across the wrist, fingers, and thumb.
“We have discovered the life history of the super-energetic matter and antimatter particles around the pulsar,” said co-author Niccolò Di Lalla, also of Stanford. “This teaches us how pulsars can act as particle accelerators.”
IXPE has also detected similar magnetic fields for the Sail and Crab pulsar wind nebulae, implying that they may be surprisingly common in these objects.
These results are published in a new article in The Astrophysical Journal.
#Xray #bones #ghostly #cosmic #hand