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Nathan Smith (University of California at Berkeley) and NASA
If you have to go out, go out with a blow! In a new study published in the journal Nature, astronomers share the discovery of a "reel-like" star system in the Milky Way galaxy, just 8,000 light-years from Earth. The images captured by the very large telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory are staggering, but do not attach too much to it. According to the researchers, the system is running so fast that it will eventually die in a powerful and gigantic breath.
There have been explosions of gamma rays in other galaxies, but scientists have never seen them so close to home. CBC reports that the star system, named Apep, was first seen more than 20 years ago in X-rays and radio, but it's the first time scientists have dedicated it to its study . After using VLT to better see, astronomer Joe Callingham was shocked by what he saw. "It's a kind of unique image for a career," he said in a statement. "It's just nature out there … and it captures something special, almost poetic or artistic, rather than just scientific." Callingham and his colleagues believe that there are two Wolf-Rayet stars in the center of the reel, with collision winds that run at around 7.5 million miles at the hour. The shape of the reel visible in the VLT images is the result of the dust projected by the massive stars, one of which is about to become supernova.
"There is no doubt that it will explode," Callingham said. He calculates that the explosion of the supernova will occur in about 100,000 years, which is long for us, mere mortals, but not for a star. Under current conditions, Callingham says that the Wolf-Rayet would go into a gamma-ray explosion, but things could change. Whatever the case may be, it seems that the Earth is not in the blast radius, which is good news because gamma-ray bursts have the potential to provoke a high-level event. ;extinction.
Studying the star system left researchers with more questions because it just does not behave as expected. "We say that the best model is a burst long progenitor of gamma rays, but in reality it's a really unique system that we do not understand, and that's our best model," said Benjamin Pope , co-author of the study. "We need more data, but whatever it is, it's a very unusual star system."
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