Tiny star unleashes gargantuan beam of matter, anti-matter

The beam of matter and antimatter is 40 trillion miles long. The beam is powered by a collapsed star with a strong magnetic field.

This beam may help explain the large number of positrons, the antimatter counterparts to electrons, throughout the Milky Way.

Astronomers discovered the beam in 2020, but they didn't know its full length because it extended beyond the edge of the Chandra detector. The new Chandra observations show that the filament is three times longer than previously seen. The longest one from a pulsar is the one that spans half the diameter of the full Moon.

It is amazing that a pulsar that is only 10 miles across can create a structure so large that we can see it from thousands of light-years away.

About 1,600 light-years from Earth is the location of the pulsar named PSR J2030+4415. The object is spinning at three times the speed of most ceiling fans.

The result may provide new insight into the source of the antimatter in the Milky Way. The positively charged equivalent to the electron is a positron.

The majority of the universe is ordinary matter. Scientists continue to find evidence for large numbers of positrons in detectors on Earth, which leads to the question: What are possible sources of this antimatter?

The Chandra study thinks that a pulsar like J2030+4415 may be an answer. Particle acceleration and high-energy radiation can be created by the combination of two extremes. The usual process of converting mass into energy is reversed.

The positrons may be leaking from the pulsar. The winds of charged particles are usually confined within the magnetic fields. The wind is behind the pulsar as it travels through space at a million miles per hour. The pile-up of water in front of a moving boat is similar to the bow shock of gas in front of the pulsar. The bow shock appears to have stopped about 20 to 30 years ago, and the pulsar caught up to it, causing an interaction with the magnetic field from left to right.

The high-energy electrons and positrons squirted out through the pulsar wind after it triggered a particle leak.

The particles lit up in X-rays when they moved along that magnetic field line. Chandra saw the long filament produced by this.

Astronomers have observed large halos around nearby pulsars that suggest energetic positrons have difficulty leaking out into the galaxy. Scientists think that pulsars explain the excess of positrons. Particles can escape into space, and eventually reach Earth, if they are discovered recently.

A paper about these results will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

More information: Antonio C. Rodriguez et al, Application of a Steady-state Accretion Disk Model to Spectrophotometry and High-resolution Spectra of Two Recent FU Ori Outbursts, The Astrophysical Journal (2022). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac496b Journal information: Astrophysical Journal Citation: Tiny star unleashes gargantuan beam of matter, anti-matter (2022, March 14) retrieved 14 March 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-03-tiny-star-unleashes-gargantuan-anti-matter.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.