The legendary antimatter has filled space from the escape of a dying star.
The stunning scene was recently captured by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. A pulsar known as PSR J2030 + 4415, with a diameter of about 20 km but possessing “super energy“, is fleeing through space at a breathtaking speed of approximately 450 km/s.
The pulsar and its bright blue tail – (Photo: Chandra/NASA)
A pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star that emits an enormous source of energy, primarily in the form of radio waves. Neutron stars are typically massive stars that have… died twice: first collapsing into a white dwarf after exhausting their energy, then collapsing again into a neutron star.
Although neutron stars are small, they are incredibly dense and powerful, and pulsars are a very strong form of neutron stars. A neutron star weighs between about 8 to 30 times the mass of the Sun, despite having a diameter of only a few dozen kilometers.
This time, the strange pulsar has emitted a gigantic tail resembling a comet, filled with particles of matter in the form of electrons and antimatter positrons.
“The magnetic field of the pulsar’s wind interacts with the magnetic field between stars, ejecting particles of matter and antimatter. The particles leaking from the pulsar’s wind appear to have been accelerated along the magnetic field lines between stars, reaching speeds of up to 1/3 the speed of light, creating a brilliant X-ray beam” – astronomer Roger Romani from Stanford University explained.
The study was recently published on arXiv and has been accepted, preparing for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.
