[ad_1]
Far in the Milky Way galaxy, 21,000 light years from Earth, astronomers have spotted the fastest spinning (and possibly the youngest) magnetar ever seen. And that’s just the start of what makes this star weird.
Magnetars are a unique type of neutron stars, which are the collapsed nuclei of supergiant stars that died during supernova events. What sets magnetars apart from other neutron stars is that they have extremely strong magnetic fields – the strongest in the known universe, in fact. They can also explode without warning and are quite difficult to spot. In fact, before the discovery of this object, there were only 30 known magnetars, compared to thousands (about 3000) of known neutron stars.
Now scientists are studying the sky with NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory – a space telescope that looks at black holes, supernovas, etc. according to a statement. They also found a myriad of other strange things that make this item truly unique.
Gallery: Amazing Photos From NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory
Astronomers spotted this magnetar for the first time on March 12, 2020 with NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Telescope. Later, Harsha Blumer, astronomer at the University of West Virginia, and Samar Safi-Harb, professor of physics at the University of Manitoba in Canada, observed the magnetar using Chandra, and they noticed a few peculiar things that brings out the magnetar. .
One of the first things that seemed intriguing about this particular object was his youth. The team estimated the magnetar to be around 500 years old, which, if true, would make it the youngest discovered to date. They determined the age of the object by measuring how quickly the magnetar’s rotational speed slows down (it spins slower over time) while assuming that the object started spinning much faster.
The second thing that really stood out for the team was the object’s spin speed, as it seemed to spin once fully every 1.4 seconds (which is really really fast).
Other astronomers have also looked at J1818.0-1607, observing 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 that it shares with known objects. as “rotational-actuated pulsars”. It is a type of neutron star that emits radiation that we detect on Earth as “pulses” of radio wave emissions.
Blumer and Safi-Harb also found that the magnetar did not convert the rotational energy of its rotations into X-ray emissions as efficiently as expected of a magnetar. In fact, the object converts this energy at a rate most common with the rotation pulsars, another interesting common point between the two objects.
The last odd thing the pair of researchers found about this fast-paced young star was that while most magnetars of this age would have left a field of debris of residual matter from the supernova that created the object, the researchers found only possible evidence of a supernova remnant with J1818.0-1607, and this debris was quite far from the object.
According to their estimates, for the debris field to have moved this far away from the magnetar, the object would have had to move at faster speeds than ever seen with a neutron star.
This work has been accepted for publication in the letters of the astrophysical journal.
Email Chelsea Gohd at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
[ad_2]
Source link