Latest news with #neutronstars
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA working to fix space station's NICER X-ray telescope
June 24 (UPI) -- The Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer X-ray telescope has a bad motor that paused its tracking of cosmic objects until NASA engineers can fix it. NASA engineers are working to fix the problem after pausing the telescope's operations on June 17, when its ability to track celestial objects degraded, according to NASA. The space agency did not say when the telescope might resume working. The telescope is mounted on the International Space Station near its starboard solar array and has been in use since 2017. It can measure neutron stars, identify black holes, active galaxies and other phenomena. It also can help to map routes to Mars for future exploration and other missions. The latest issue with the NICER telescope is among many that it has experienced since its 2017 deployment. The NICER telescope developed a light leak in May 2023 when several thin thermal shields were damaged and let in sunlight that made the telescope useless during daylight hours. NASA astronaut Nick Hague in January installed nine patches to fix the worst areas of damage, but some light interference continued to affect the telescope's performance. A closer inspection showed several smaller cracks and holes that still allowed light to enter the telescope. NASA engineers reconfigured the telescope's measurement-power unit to compensate for the light intrusion, which enabled the telescope to resume its normal operations on March 12. Additional damage to at least one thermal shield forced NASA to minimize daytime observations on May 22, which caused another modification in the telescope's use. X-ray telescopes, like the NICER, enable NASA scientists to study and better understand extreme radio events in space. Observations from the NICER telescope and a Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array that is in low-Earth orbit enabled NASA scientists to assess a rapid burst of radio waves from a dead star called a magnetar in 2020. The burst released as much energy in a fraction of a second as the sun does during an entire year, according to a study published in the journal Nature. The powerful energy burst produced a laser-like beam instead of an explosion. NASA scientists in October 2022 used the same two telescopes to observe another burst of radio waves from the same magnetar.
Yahoo
01-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Super-magnetic dead star throws a violent temper tantrum as NASA X-ray spacecraft looks on
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Using NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) spacecraft, astronomers have made detailed observations of a highly magnetic dead star or "magnetar" as it threw a massive tantrum. The observations mark the first time that the polarization of X-rays from a magnetar, neutron stars possessing the most powerful magnetic fields in the known universe, have been measured during an outburst or "activation phase." The erupting magnetar observed by IXPE is known as 1E 1841-045, a neutron star located around 28,000 light-years from Earth in the supernova wreckage known as Kes 73, which shocked astronomers when it burst to life on Aug. 20, 2024. "This is the first time we have been able to observe the polarization of a magnetar in an active state, and this has allowed us to constrain the mechanisms and geometry of emission that lie behind these active states," team leader and National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) researcher Michela Rigoselli said in a statement. "It will now be interesting to observe 1E 1841-045 once it has returned to its quiescent state to monitor the evolution of its polarimetric properties." Like all neutron stars, magnetars begin when the lives of stars with ten times the mass of the sun or greater run out of fuel for nuclear fusion. This ends the production of outward radiation pressure flowing from the cores of these stars that, for millions of years, has supported them against the inward pressure of their own a result of this, the cores of these massive stars crush down at a rapid rate, creating shock waves that ripple into the outer stellar layers of the star, triggering massive supernova explosions that send most of the mass of these stars hurtling into space, creating wreckage fields like Kes 73. What is left behind is the core of the star, crushed down to a width of around 12 miles (20 kilometers) but with a mass between one and two times that of the sun. This leads to material filling the neutron star that is so dense that if a teaspoon of it were brought to Earth, it would weigh 10 million tons, about equal to 85,000 adult blue whales. Another consequence of the collapse of the stellar core that births a neutron star is that the magnetic field lines of that star are squashed together. The closer together the magnetic field lines are, the stronger the magnetic field gets. As a result, neutron stars have the strongest magnetic fields in the known universe. Magnetars take this to the extreme, possessing magnetic fields that are up to 1 trillion times stronger than Earth's magnetosphere. The magnetic environments around these stars are unlike anything found anywhere else in the universe and way beyond anything we could generate on can get hints about these magnetic fields and the environments around magnetars by measuring the organized orientation or "polarization" of light emitted from them. Magnetars and the phenomena around them get even more extreme when they are in an active outburst phase. During these phases, magnetars can release as much as 1,000 times the energy they do when in a quiescent phase. Yet astronomers still aren't clear on the mechanisms that ramp up this energy output. Observations like this one could help change that. Related Stories: — What happens inside neutron stars, the universe's densest known objects? — James Webb Space Telescope finds neutron star mergers forge gold in the cosmos: 'It was thrilling' — The most powerful explosions in the universe could reveal where gold comes from What this team found was that X-rays from 1E 1841-045 become increasingly polarized at higher energy levels. Yet the X-rays kept the same polarization angle throughout this ramping up of energy levels. They reason that this means that the components behind the emissions are somehow connected. Additionally, the highest energy component, which is the most elusive and difficult to study, is strongly influenced by the magnetic field of the team's research was published on Wednesday (May 28) in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The Independent
12-05-2025
- Science
- The Independent
The universe is dying much more quickly than we thought, scientists say
The universe is decaying far more quickly than we previously thought, scientists have said. But the end is still a long way off: 10^78, or a one with 78 zeroes, years away. Still, that is much longer than the previous estimate, which was 10^1100 years. That is the time it will take for white dwarf stars to entirely decay. Those stars are the most long-lasting objects in the universe, and so should stay around for longest. The new research is a follow-up to a 2023 paper that showed that not only black holes but also other objects could "evaporate" through a process similar to Hawking radiation. The new paper saw the researchers look to understand how long that process would take. "The ultimate end of the universe comes much sooner than expected, but fortunately it still takes a very long time," said Heino Falcke, a black hole expert who was lead author on the new paper. The findings build on Hawking radiation, which was first proposed by Stephen Hawking in 1975. He suggested that it was possible for black particles and radiation to escape from a black hole – at the edge, two particles would form, with one being sucked into the black hole and another escaping. Eventually, through that process, the black hole very slowly decays, becoming instead particles and radiation. The time that process takes for an object to evaporate depends how dense it is. Neutron stars and stellar black holes take 10^67 years, for instance. The Moon and a human would take 10^90 years, the researchers suggested. But they also noted that there are other processes that would probably mean those objects would disappear before that time runs out.
