A mysterious object that has puzzled astronomers for 100 years has revealed its true nature: It is a precursor to a rare “cosmic monster.”
According to SciTech Daily and Science Alert, a team of scientists led by Dr. Tomer Shenar from the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands) has discovered the peculiar monster named HD 45166 is a dormant Wolf-Rayet star.
The “explosive” transformation that could soon create a star – (Image: SCITECH DAILY)
HD 45166 was discovered long ago, classified as a helium-rich world with a companion star. It resembles a Wolf-Rayet star—a rare type of star with an unusual spectrum, named after two astronomers who identified this type of object—but it lacks certain characteristics.
It exhibits an unusual stellar wind and seems to be mysteriously losing mass.
A new study by Dutch scientists, based on the latest observations from a series of the world’s most powerful telescopes, has found that this monster possesses an extremely strong magnetic field. It becomes the first magnetic Wolf-Rayet star to be discovered.
HD 45166 is ejecting material into space, thereby gradually losing mass.
This process will lead it to collapse into a neutron star, a super-dense object with a diameter of only 20 km but several times the mass of ordinary stars like our Sun.
And this is a type of “superior” neutron star: a magnetar, with a magnetic field stronger than typical neutron stars by 1,000 times and more than Earth’s by 4 billion billion times.
Magnetars have been theorized in astronomical studies, but this is the first time we can witness how one comes into existence. Like other neutron stars, it is a kind of “zombie,” with the original object that formed it being a massive star.
To become a magnetar, HD 45166 must have an exceptional magnetic field. Measurements show its magnetic field strength can reach up to 43,000 gauss, the strongest ever recorded.
Scientists are still observing it and hope to directly capture the birth of a “legendary” object, long believed to be the cause of many unusual phenomena, including strange radio waves that observatories occasionally detect from the universe.
“It’s exciting to discover a new type of astronomical object, especially when it has always been hiding in plain sight,” Dr. Shenar said. Details about this cosmic monster have just been published in the scientific journal Science.
