[ad_1]
A rapidly spinning, ultramagnetic 500-year-old baby neutron star has been spotted spinning at speeds never before seen in the Milky Way.
The flicker X-rays and radio waves of this giant baby – adorably named J1818.0-1607 – would probably have first appeared in the sky when Nicolas Copernicus, the Polish scientist who proposed that the sun (and not Earth) was the center of the universe, first looking up to the heavens.
If Copernicus had had orbital X-ray telescopes or powerful radio receivers, he would have witnessed the birth of a magnetar: an extremely rare and violent species of neutron star with magnetic the fields. Just 500 years later (assuming astronomers were his age), this howling baby still spins faster than any known magnetar, at one revolution every 1.4 seconds. It can also move faster than any neutron star previously discovered, regardless of its variety.
Like all neutron stars, J1818.0-1607 would have emerged after the explosive death of a large star – known as a supernova – as the crushed remnant of its nucleus. Neutron stars are tiny in astrophysical terms, no larger than Madison, Wisconsin. But as the densest known objects in the universe other than black holes – full of crushed matter to the point where atoms lose their structural integrity and come together to resemble the nucleus of a single giant atom – neutron stars can be as massive as normal sized stars.
Related: From the Big Bang to the present: snapshots of our universe through time
Only a tiny fraction of neutron stars are magnetars. But that’s not the only unusual thing about J1818.0-1607. It is also a pulsar, a type of super-fast cosmic beacon that darkens and lights up with each rotation.
“Only five magnetars including this one have been recorded to also act as pulsars, constituting less than 0.2% of the known population of neutron stars,” said researchers involved in the study at a NASA. declaration.
To determine the magnetar’s age, the researchers tracked its slowing down over time and estimated the rotational speed it was born with. From its starting rotational speed, it would have taken 500 years for the newborn magnetar to slow down to its current speed. However, this age estimate is somewhat uncertain, according to an article published on November 26, 2020 in Letters from the astrophysical journal.
Because the magnetar is so young, astronomers should be able to spot the rest of the supernova that spawned it, and researchers may have found it at a “relatively large” distance from the magnetar. If the magnetar is truly 500 years old and this supernova remnant is truly the remnants of the birth of the magnetar, then it has moved about 8 to 16 million mph (13 to 26 million km / h) through the Milky Way over its entire lifespan – faster than any of the nearly 3,000 other known neutron stars. If, however, astronomers estimated the wrong age for the magnetar, or researchers identified the wrong remnant, then this youngster may not be moving as fast.
But although this baby is a tiny newborn in astronomical terms, there may be an even younger magnetar in the Milky Way, although maybe a slower movement. As Live Science previously reported, researchers believe they may have witnessed the actual birth of a magnetar in a distant galaxy last year, making that magnetar no older than a human toddler.
Originally posted on Live Science.
[ad_2]
Source link