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An artist impression of the neutron star with strong magnetic field in Swift J0243.6 + 6124 that launches a jet. During the brilliant explosion in which it was first discovered, the Swift J0243.6 + 6124 neutron star mounted very rapidly, producing abundant X-ray emission from the internal parts of the disk. accretion. At the same time, the team detected a radio broadcast with a sensitive radio telescope, the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in the United States. By studying how this radio emission has changed with X-rays, we have been able to deduce that it came from narrow-displacement, narrow-focus material beams, known as jets, far away from magnetic poles in neutron stars. . Credit: ICRAR / University of Amsterdam.
Astronomers have detected radio jets emitted by a high magnetic field neutron star, which is not anticipated by current theory, according to a new study published in Nature aujourd & # 39; hui.
The team, led by researchers from the University of Amsterdam, observed the object known as Swift J0243.6 + 6124 using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large radio telescope. Array in New Mexico and NASA's Swift Space Telescope.
"Neutron stars are stellar bodies," said James Miller-Jones, co-author of the study, at the unit of the International Center for Radioastronomy Research at Curtin University.
"They form when a massive star runs out of fuel and suffers a supernova, with the central parts of the star collapsing under their own gravity.
"This collapse increases the strength of the star's magnetic field to several thousand billion times that of our own sun, which then gradually weakens over hundreds of thousands of years."
University of Amsterdam Ph.D. Student Jakob van den Eijnden, who led the research, said that neutron stars and black holes were sometimes in orbit with a nearby "companion" star. "The associated star's gas feeds the neutron star or the black hole and produces spectacular displays when some of the material is projected into powerful jets moving at a speed close to that of light," he said. he declares.
An artist impression of the neutron star in Swift J0243.6 + 6124. The neutron star has a very strong magnetic field that prevents the accretion disk from penetrating completely into the surface of the neutron star. Part of the gas in the disk is channeled along the magnetic field lines on the magnetic poles of the neutron star, producing an X-ray emission that we see as short, regular pulses of X-rays while the star turn every 10 seconds. Credit: ICRAR / University of Amsterdam.
Astronomers have known the jets for decades, but until now, they had observed only jets from neutron stars with much weaker magnetic fields. The dominant belief was that a sufficiently strong magnetic field prevents the materials from getting close enough to a neutron star to form jets.
"Black holes were considered the undisputed kings of throwing powerful jets, even while feeding on a small amount of matter from their star," said Van den Eijnden.
"The weak jets belonging to neutron stars become luminous only when the star consumes very quickly the gas of his companion.
"The magnetic field of the neutron star we studied is about 10 trillion times stronger than that of our own Sun. We observed for the first time a jet from a neutron star with a very strong magnetic field.
"The discovery reveals a whole new class of jet production sources that we need to study," he said.
An artist impression of the Swift Binary System J0243.6 + 6124.A binary system with a neutron star in a 27-day orbit and a donor star more massive and fast-spinning. The rapid rotation of the donor star rejects a disc of matter around the stellar equator. As the neutron star passes through the disk during its orbit, it captures some of this outgoing gas, which spirals to the neutron star in an accretion disk. Credit: ICRAR / University of Amsterdam.
Astronomers around the world are studying the jets to better understand what causes them and what power they release in space.
"The jets play a very important role in returning the enormous amounts of gravitational energy extracted by neutron stars and black holes in the surrounding environment," said Professor Miller-Jones.
"Finding jets from a neutron star with a strong magnetic field goes against what we expected, and shows that there are still many things we do not know yet about how the jets are produced. "
"A scalable jet from a highly magnetized, highly magnetic X-ray pulsar" was published in Nature September 26, 2018.
Explore more:
A neutron star with a strong magnetic field can still throw jets
More information:
An evolutionary jet from a strongly magnetized X-ray pulsar, Nature (2018). DOI: 10.1038 / s41586-018-0524-1, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0524-1
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