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It is not impossible: ask international researchers who have discovered an astrophysical phenomenon that they never thought possible.
The group, which includes astronomer Gregory Sivakoff from the University of Alberta, has discovered that highly magnetic neutron stars consume materials and emit jets.
When objects such as neutron stars – the smallest and densest of their kind, which form from the supernova explosion of a massive star – and black holes develop, they release a jet of material.
"These are well-targeted material streams that often move at speeds close to those of light," Sivakoff, an associate professor in the physics department, said in a statement.
The jets of matter and energy in the surrounding space can affect everything from the local environment to the formation of galaxies.
But if scientists have known jets for a long time (they are more than 50 years old), we do not understand the physics of their launch.
Based on the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico and NASA's Neil Gehrels Observatory, researchers have observed a highly magnetic neutron star called Swift J0243.
"The radio spectrum of Swift J0243 is the same as that of jets from other sources and evolves in the same way," said lead author Jakob van den Eijnden. student from the University of Amsterdam. "The brightness of the radio also follows that of falling gases, as can be seen in other jet systems.
"So, for the first time, we observed a jet of a neutron star with a strong magnetic field," he said.
This breakthrough invalidates the long-held belief that it is not possible for jets to form in strong magnetic fields, which prevented the material from reaching the neutron star.
"That means we understand less than we thought we'd done when it came to jets," admitted Sivakoff.
Going forward, the team plans to study more magnetized neutron stars "to find out if the system we observed in this article is typical or atypical," he added.
The research, conducted by scientists from the University of Alberta, the University of Amsterdam and the International Center for Research in Radioastronomy (ICRAR), was published this week in the journal Nature.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope recently discovered novel elements around a neutron star, at the heart of which can be found "nuclear pulps", the best-known material. Learn more about outer space here.
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