Latest news with #X-ray
News18
10-07-2025
- Science
- News18
What Happens When A Star Dies? Space Mystery Unlocked After 50 Years
FXTs are failed gamma-ray bursts, the last signals from dying stars. A decades-long mystery now reveals stellar death is more complex than once believed A long-standing astronomical enigma has finally been unravelled. Scientists now believe that Fast X-ray Transients (FXTs), brief, intense X-ray flashes, are the result of failed gamma-ray bursts, marking the final moments of massive dying stars. This revelation reshapes our understanding of how stars meet their end. Five Decades Of Unanswered Questions Since the 1970s, astronomers have observed puzzling bursts of X-rays, lasting from mere seconds to several hours, without knowing their cause. These phenomena, dubbed FXTs, have mystified scientists for nearly 50 years. Now, Jillian Rastinejad and her team at Northwestern University in Illinois, USA, have identified their source: the collapsed core of a massive star struggling, and failing, to produce a gamma-ray burst (GRB). How Dying Stars Generate FXTs When a giant star, around 15 to 30 times the mass of the Sun, reaches the end of its life, it collapses inward, creating jets that blast outward at incredible speeds. If these jets escape the star's outer layers, a gamma-ray burst occurs. However, when the jets fail to break through, they become trapped, generating a shock that emits X-rays, what we observe as an FXT. The Einstein Probe's Breakthrough On January 8, 2025, NASA's Einstein Probe telescope detected a powerful X-ray flash, designated EP 250108a. Further analysis linked it to a rare supernova, SN 2025kg, nicknamed 'The Kangaroo'. This particular supernova belongs to the fast-moving Type Ic-BL category, with its material expanding at roughly 19,000 kilometres per second. In this case, the star's jets could not pierce its outer layers and were instead trapped inside, releasing their energy in the form of an FXT. Although not as dramatic as a gamma-ray burst, the event was still strikingly powerful. Astrophysicist Rob Ailes-Ferris observed that while the FXT resembled those linked to gamma-ray bursts, the difference lay in the jets' failure to emerge. Previously, it was assumed that gamma-ray bursts were a frequent feature of stellar collapse. However, this discovery reveals that 'trapped jets', and therefore FXTs, occur more often than their successful counterparts. Unlocking The Secrets Of Stellar Death Scientists are now focused on understanding what causes jets to fail. Are internal forces, such as magnetic fields or stellar composition, to blame? Or do external factors, like surrounding material, play a role? Researchers hope that solving these questions will also offer insight into other cosmic mysteries. As Ailes-Ferris from the University of Leicester in England explained, 'This discovery not only enhances our understanding of FXTs, but also deepens our knowledge of how stars die and the remnants they leave behind." The full study has been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, with further technical details available in two accompanying papers on view comments First Published: July 10, 2025, 11:49 IST Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
The Onion
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Onion
The Onion's Exclusive Interview With Lorde
New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde has released Virgin, her fourth studio album. The Onion sat down with the artist to discuss identity, inspiration, and what's next. The Onion : How has your music evolved as you've gotten older? Lorde: When I was younger I was really intimidated by the black keys on the piano, but now I can't get enough of them. The Onion : What inspired the X-ray album cover? Lorde: It's an homage to the TV show Bones . The Onion : Are you touring soon? Lorde: I hope not. I just signed up for a pizza-making class. The Onion: What's your writing process like? Lorde: My secretary types up my thoughts and faxes them to Jack Antonoff. The Onion : Who are some artists you'd like to collaborate with in the future? Lorde: I've always wanted to work with one of those guys who paints themselves silver and pretends to be a statue. The Onion : You've described yourself as 'in the middle gender-wise.' What does this mean to you? Lorde: Sitting on a horse in oversized Wranglers, no top. Alternatively, standing barefoot in the rain in a wedding dress. And in both of these scenarios it's heavily implied that I'm a ghost. The Onion : What are some things to consider when tying a bowline knot? Lorde: The bowline is an extremely secure knot, but can be hard to adjust. It all comes down to context. The Onion : What's next for you? Lorde: Disappearing into some tall grass.
USA Today
29-05-2025
- Science
- USA Today
Astronomers find startling pulsing object in Milky Way: 'Unlike anything we have seen'
Astronomers find startling pulsing object in Milky Way: 'Unlike anything we have seen' The mystery object, located just a short 15,000 light-years from Earth in our Milky Way galaxy, revealed itself to an international team of scientists when it was observed emitting pulses. Astronomers recently discovered a never-before-seen celestial phenomenon hiding in our own cosmic backyard. The mystery object, located just a short 15,000 light-years from Earth in our Milky Way galaxy, revealed itself to an international team of scientists when it was observed emitting startling pulses. What made the pulses puzzling to the astronomers was that they came in the form of both radio waves and X-rays. Most intriguing: the cycle occurred like clockwork for two minutes at a time every 44 minutes. The discovery marks the first time that such objects, called long-period transients, have been detected in X-rays, the team said in a press release announcing the findings. 'This object is unlike anything we have seen before,' Ziteng Andy Wang, an astronomer at Curtin University in Australia who led the research, said in a statement. The objects, which emit radio pulses occurring minutes or hours apart, are a relatively recent discovery – with just 10 being identified since 2022, the team said. While astronomers are so far unable to explain the origin of the mystifying signals and why they occur at unusual intervals, the team hopes their findings provide some insights. Milky Way photos: Stunning images of our galaxy making itself visible around the globe What is the Milky Way galaxy? The Milky Way is our home galaxy with a disc of stars that spans more than 100,000 light-years. Because it appears as a rotating disc curving out from a dense central region, the Milky Way is known as a spiral galaxy. Our planet itself is located along one of the galaxy's spiral arms, about halfway from the center, according to NASA. The Milky Way sits in a cosmic neighborhood called the Local Group that includes more than 50 other galaxies. Those galaxies can be as small as a dwarf galaxy with up to only a few billion stars, or as large as Andromeda, our nearest large galactic neighbor. The Milky Way got its name because from our perspective on Earth, it appears as a faint band of light stretching across the entire sky. How did astronomers detect strange pulses in Milky Way? The team discovered the object, known as ASKAP J1832-0911, in the Milky Way by using a radio telescope in Australia. The astronomers, all from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, then correlated the radio signals with X-ray pulses detected by NASA's space telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The Australian radio telescope has a wide field view of the night sky, while Chandra observes only a fraction of it. For that reason, the astronomers say it was fortunate that Chandra was coincidentally observing the same area of the night sky at the same time. 'Discovering that ASKAP J1832-0911 was emitting X-rays felt like finding a needle in a haystack,' Wang said in a statement. Astronomy: Fast radio burst detected in 'dead' galaxy raises questions about mysterious signals What could the pulsing be? It's possible the celestial object could be the core of a dead star, known as a magnetar. With their extremely strong magnetic fields, these neutron stars – small, dense collapsed cores of supergiant stars – are capable of producing the powerful bursts of energy that have been observed for years. The object could also be a pair of stars in a binary system in which one of them is a highly-magnetized white dwarf star at the end of its evolution, the team said. But Wang cautioned that neither of those theories fully explains what his team observed. "This discovery could indicate a new type of physics or new models of stellar evolution," Wang said in a statement. Fortunately, finding one object using both X-rays and radio waves hints at the existence of many more, according to the researchers. The findings were published Wednesday, May 28, in the journal Nature. Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@
