A cosmic 'speed camera' just revealed the staggering speed of neutron star jets in a world first
MARCH 30, 2024
by James Miller-Jones, The Conversation
Simultaneous X-ray and multi-band radio light curves of 4U1728. Credit: Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07133-5
How fast can a neutron star drive powerful jets into space? The answer, it turns out, is about one-third the speed of light, as our team has just revealed in a new study published in Nature.
Energetic cosmic beams known as jets are seen throughout our universe. They are launched when material—mainly dust and gas—falls in towards any dense central object, such as a neutron star (an extremely dense remnant of a once-massive star) or a black hole.
The jets carry away some of the gravitational energy released by the infalling gas, recycling it back into the surroundings on far larger scales.
The most powerful jets in the universe come from the biggest black holes at the centers of galaxies. The energy output of these jets can affect the evolution of an entire galaxy, or even a galaxy cluster. This makes jets a critical, yet intriguing, component of our universe.
Although jets are common, we still don't fully understand how they are launched. Measuring the jets from a neutron star has now given us valuable information.
More:
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-cosmic-camera-revealed-staggering-neutron.html