A rapidly spinning neutron star with an incredibly strong magnetic field “glitched” when it destroyed a space rock, a new study finds.
The neutron star SGR 1935+2154, located 30,000 light-years away near the center of the Milky Way galaxy, appears to have “glitched” by briefly changing its logical velocity after an asteroid was pulled inward by its own gravity and ruptured. . The glitch consists of the star changing its rotational speed while also giving off a fast radio burst (FRB), which is a powerful burst of radio waves.
in New study For the “warped” star, astronomers can finally connect these mysterious bursts of radio energy to these extreme stellar bodies known as magnetars.
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Like all neutron stars, magnetars are born when a massive star runs out of fuel for nuclear fusion – a process that creates the external energy needed to keep a star from collapsing under its own gravity.
When a star’s outer layers are blown away by a powerful supernova or stellar explosion, the inner core collapses, ejecting stellar remnants with the mass of the Sun compressed to a width equivalent to the average city on Earth. (One teaspoon of neutron star matter brought to Earth would weigh a billion tons.)
The collapse also pushes the dying star’s magnetic field lines together, creating the strongest magnetic fields in the universe. Hence, this type of neutron star that has a strong magnetic field is known as a magnetar.
Meanwhile, FRBs have been a mystery since the first Lorimer burst was spotted in 2007. These radio pulses, with durations ranging from a fraction of a millisecond to three seconds rarely repeated, were first communicated with magnetars back in 2020. When astronomers detected two rapid-fire FRBs coming from within the Milky Way.
Although the connection between magnetars and FRBs has been established, scientists are still not clear what this mechanism behind the association actually is.
The new study suggests that magnetars can produce FRBs when their massive gravitational influence generates tidal forces in an asteroid so massive that they tear apart a space rock. (The same effect is seen around black holes in tidal disturbance events; when a star gets too close to a cosmic giant, its gravitational influence tears the star apart.)
Since neutron stars are essentially the remnants of dead stars, it is possible that they are surrounded by the remnants of their own planetary systems. If these regions were anything like our own solar system, this debris would include asteroids.
If an asteroid is pulled in by the gravity of a magnetar and destroyed, the momentum carried by the space rock through the dead planetary system also cannot be erased by the laws of physics. Thus, the imbalance in the magnetar’s velocity would arise from the momentum carried by the asteroid being transferred to the magnetar.
If the asteroid is racing in the same direction as the neutron star’s spin, that action accelerates the spin of the dense stellar remnant — a “glitch.” If the asteroid is moving in the opposite direction of the magnetar’s rotation, the transferred angular momentum slows its rotation, which is classified as an “antiparallel”.
The remnants of the destroyed asteroid are subsequently entrapped by the magnetar’s intense magnetic field, causing the field lines to tangle, snap, and reconnect. This process, called magnetic reconnection, detonates the FRB.
Eventually, what’s left of the space rock will fall to the surface of the neutron star. The gravity of one of these stellar remnants is so great that an object the mass of a marshmallow falling to its surface would release energy equivalent to Detonate 1,000 hydrogen bombsAccording to NASA.
This means that the asteroid material hitting the surface of the neutron star should create powerful flares of energy in different frequencies of light, which astronomers can spot. Scientists tuned in to this effect could help find more asteroids being attacked by magnetars, thus strengthening the connection between these neutron stars and the devastating events they cause to form FRBs.
The team was researched Posted May 25th In the monthly peer-reviewed notifications issued by the Royal Astronomical Society.
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