This pulsar "cannonball" runs at the speed of escape through the Milky Way



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Astronomers have discovered a pulsar, a kind of zombie star, crossing the galaxy so quickly that it could travel from Earth to the moon in six minutes flat. The dead star has a tail that points to the rest of a supernova that exploded 10,000 years ago. Astronomers suspected that it could have kicked the pulsar to accelerate, but they had to wait 10 years of telescope data to convince their cause.

A pulsar is the rapidly rotating neutron star that remains after the explosion of a supernova that ends its normal life, leaving behind a dense nucleus. They send bursts of radiation that turn into a beacon signal and warn astronomers of their location and movements. This particular pulsar, PSR J0002 + 6216, rotates 8.7 times per second and displays a radio transmit tail directed directly to the expanding shell of debris of a supernova called CTB 1.

Pulsar timing

The tail gives a good visual clue on what made the pulsar skitter in the sky, but the scientists also had to check if the timing was effective. PSR J0002 is now more than 6,000 light-years from the center of this supernova explosion, which occurred only 10,000 years ago. The scientists had to determine if he could have traveled so fast.

The spin of a pulsar is very regular enough for astronomers to use it as a cosmic clock. But if the pulsar is moving, the astronomers will record the pulses arriving a little earlier or later than expected. By analyzing the J0002 PSR emissions with 10 years of data from the Fermi Gamma space telescope, they were able to measure the speed of the star at 2.5 million miles an hour, placing it among the 2% of pulsars the fastest ever measured. Astronomers from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the Naval Research Laboratory have conducted the research, which is being revised before it is published in the Official Journal. Letters from the Astrophysical Journal. They presented it at the 17th meeting of high energy astrophysics this week in California.

Fortunately, the PSR J0002 does not come to us, but rather accelerates in our field of vision. This is good news because even the remaining core of a massive star still weighs more than our sun and would cause gravitational havoc as it passed in front of any other object. "If it really was between the Moon and the Earth, it would be the end," says Frank Schinzel, lead author of the research. "If we were more than a few light-years away, we could see a show of disturbances from neighboring solar systems."

The pulsar is going so fast that it will eventually completely leave the Milky Way. It is extremely difficult to spot pulsars outside the Milky Way. But knowing that pulsars can be ejected from the galaxy by the explosions that create them gives astronomers a new population of objects to study and understand.

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