Would you like to feel infinitesimally small?
There is an x-ray beam made up of both matter and antimatter 40 trillion kilometers long, flowing out of a collapsing star, shown in the latest photos from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory.
The rotating and collapsing remains of a star, otherwise known as a pulsar, is located about 1,600 light years from Earth and is considered relatively small.
It is moving through space at a million miles per hour.
NASA notes in a press release that the x-ray beam may help scientists understand why the Milky Way is bursting at the seams with antimatter.
A city-sized collapsed star has generated a beam of matter and antimatter that stretches for trillions of kilometers. This discovery could help explain the presence of positrons detected throughout the Milky Way galaxy and here on Earth. More: https://t.co/E7A3ZjgUT6 pic.twitter.com/YnPkU4N1Z5
— Chandra Observatory (@chandraxray) March 14, 2022
Scientists don't know how antimatter got into our universe.
According to a forthcoming study to be published in the Astrophysical Journal, the answer may be positrons, the antimatter equivalent of electrons, which may originate from energy fields generated by rapidly spinning pulsars.
That is in stark contrast to prevailing theories that positrons generally have trouble leaking out from pulsars and that can account for the abundance of antimatter in our galaxy.
It's amazing that a pulsar that's only ten miles across can create a structure so big that we can see it from thousands of light-years away.
The smallest object visible to the naked eye would be 100 times smaller than the pulsar if it stretched from New York to Los Angeles.
It's a discovery that involves some mind- boggling numbers. It doesn't seem all that far-fetched considering that some physicists think there may be an entire antimatter universe that moves backwards in time.
The tiny star has a beam of matter and antimatter.
Physicists find particles that switch between matter and antimatter.
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