Sentences with phrase «star of a magnetar»
A team of European astronomers using ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) now believe they've found the partner star of a magnetar for the first time.
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Of about 2,600 neutron stars known, to date only 29 are classified as magnetars.
Astronomers have discovered a vast cloud of high - energy particles called a wind nebula around a rare ultra-magnetic neutron star, or magnetar, for the first time.
Two common models for gamma - ray emission from FRBs exist: one invoking magnetic flare events from magnetars — highly magnetized neutron stars that are the dense remnants of collapsed stars — and another invoking the catastrophic merger of two neutron stars, colliding to form a black hole.
Some, for reasons that are not totally understood, fall under the classification of «magnetars,» which take the already - astounding field of an ordinary neutron star and multiply it by about 1,000 times.
In the first stage of this process, the more massive star of the pair begins to run out of fuel, transferring its outer layers to its less massive companion — which is destined to become the magnetar — causing it to rotate more and more quickly.
The discovery of the magnetar's former companion elsewhere in the cluster helps solve the mystery of how a star that started off so massive could become a magnetar, rather than collapse into a black hole.
The rapid rotation created by mass transfer between the two stars appears necessary to generate the ultra-strong magnetic field and then a second mass transfer phase allows the magnetar - to - be to slim down sufficiently so that it does not collapse into a black hole at the moment of its death.
They hunted for runaway stars — objects escaping the cluster at high velocities — that might have been kicked out of orbit by the supernova explosion that formed the magnetar.
Extremely bright exploding stars, called superluminous supernovae, and long gamma ray bursts also occur in this type of galaxy, he noted, and both are hypothesized to be associated with massive, highly magnetic and rapidly rotating neutron stars called magnetars.
They suggested that the magnetar formed through the interactions of two very massive stars orbiting one another in a binary system so compact that it would fit within the orbit of the Earth around the Sun.
The Westerlund 1 star cluster [1], located 16,000 light - years away in the southern constellation of Ara (the Altar), hosts one of the two dozen magnetars known in the Milky Way.
The new study finds that the supernovae are likely powered by the creation of a magnetar, an extraordinarily magnetized neutron star spinning hundreds of times per second.
Magnetars have the mass of the sun packed into a star the size of a city and have magnetic fields a hundred trillion times that of Earth.
They also discovered a new magnetar, a rare kind of neutron star (a star as dense as an atomic nucleus but the size of a city).
The characteristics of the surrounding stars suggest that although the magnetar's progenitor probably reached 40 solar masses at one point, it shed its mass so quickly that when the star exploded it fell under the 20 - solar - mass limit, thereby creating a magnetar instead of a black hole — and conforming to current theory about stellar evolution.
Like all magnetars, CXOU J164710.2 - 455216 is a rare kind of neutron star that for as - yet - unexplained reasons possesses the most powerful magnetic field in the universe.
Yet according to detailed measurements of the relative motions of the surrounding stars, the team reports in an upcoming issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics, that like every neighboring star, the mass of the magnetar's progenitor must have been at least 40 times greater than the sun's.
The Dutch and Breakthrough Listen teams suggest that the fast radio bursts may come from a highly magnetized rotating neutron star — a magnetar — in the vicinity of a massive black hole that is still growing as gas and dust fall into it.
Thornton, however, favours magnetars — highly magnetic neutron stars — as the source of FRBs.
Magnetars have the mass of the sun packed into a star the size of a city and have magnetic fields a hundred trillion times that of the Earth.
The top candidates, the astronomers suggested, are a neutron star, possibly a highly - magnetic magnetar, surrounded by either material ejected by a supernova explosion or material ejected by a resulting pulsar, or an active nucleus in the galaxy, with radio emission coming from jets of material emitted from the region surrounding a supermassive black hole.
«We haven't, however, completely ruled out an association with the magnetar or the other stars of the cluster yet.
A giant flash of energy from a supermagnetic neutron star thousands of light - years from Earth may shed a whole new light on scientists» understanding of such mysterious magnetars and of gamma - ray bursts.
«The cluster of stars also harbours a rare, extremely magnetic, neutron star known as a magnetar, but we think the gamma ray emission could be linked to the luminous blue variable star.
If the young - magnetar theory is correct, then — according to one possible version of the story — we have to envisage a newborn, superdense neutron star cloaked in a powerful and highly unstable magnetic field.
New data from these powerful telescopes later confirmed that 1E 1613 has the properties of a magnetar — a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field — making it only the 30th known one.
Magnetars are a special kind of neutron star, and neutron stars are a special kind of dead star.
They found it by observing a long - sought, short - lived afterglow of subatomic particles ejected from a magnetar — a neutron star with a magnetic field billions of times stronger than any on Earth and 100 times stronger than any other previously known in the Universe.