Powerful jets pulling neutron stars with incredible magnetism

For the first time, astronomers have seen a stream of matter move rapidly from a neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field – a ten thousand billion times more powerful than that of the Sun. This surprising discovery not only caught the researchers off guard, but also forced them to fundamentally rethink their current theories of how the jets are formed throughout the cosmos.

Astronomers have long been fascinated by neutron stars, which are the superdense nuclei left behind a massive star that explodes dramatically. These extreme stars are so compact that if our Sun were compressed to the density of a neutron star, its width would be only about 10 miles (for comparison, the Sun has a width of about 10 miles). approximately 850,000 miles). With so much matter packaged in such a small space, neutron stars have intense gravitational forces near their surfaces that are rivaled only by black holes, which can lead to interesting effects.

In a new study, published yesterday in the journal Nature, a team of researchers used a Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope to observe and analyze a bizarre neutron star named Swift J0243.6 + 6124 (SW J0243). This object was discovered for the first time thanks to an unexpected and brilliant explosion captured by NASA's Swift Space Telescope in October 2017.

By monitoring the evolution of X-ray emissions and radio emissions from the object after the explosion, the researchers were able to determine that the neutron star was probably flying material to a nearby star. massive and condensed this material into a swirling disk called accretion disk. In turn, the interactions between the accretion disk and the magnetic field lines of the neutron star lead to the production of powerful jets at the poles of the neutron star, which spit matter out. at the speed of light.