Crab Nebula: Giant radio pulses and detected X-ray overvoltages

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The nebula is six light-years wide and is a growing cloud of debris formed by a supernova explosion. (A light year is six trillion miles).

The light from this supernova first reached Earth in July 1054 and witnessed astronomers from Japan and China.

When the star exploded, it formed a neutron star, which is the dense core of a star the size of a city like Chicago. It became a rapidly rotating pulsar, or neutron star, that is now in the nebula.

This star rotates 30 times per second and is considered one of the brightest pulsars that emit light in X-rays and radio wavelengths that is visible in our sky. When these beams of light pass through the Earth, scientists can catalog these pulses and determine if they are a pulsar.

Hubble presents the
According to a study published last week in the journal Science, the pulsar in the Crab Nebula could be hundreds of times more energetic than researchers previously believed.

Releases bright pulses of millisecond radio waves, called giant radio pulses, accompanied by X-ray surges

How the nebula was discovered

This mosaic image of the Crab Nebula was captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

A global team of scientists made the discovery using data from NASA’s NICER telescope, or the neutron star Interior Composition Explorer, which is on the International Space Station.

The NICER telescope was used to observe the pulsar of the Crab Nebula between August 2017 and August 2019. It was also observed using ground-based telescopes such as the 34-meter plate at the Kashima Space Technology Center in Japan and the 64-meter plate at the Deep Space Center Usuda of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. In 2019 the Kashima telescope was irreparably damaged by a typhoon.

It is possible that the rapid burst of radio came from the Milky Way

“Of the more than 2,800 pulsars cataloged, the Crab pulsar is one of the few to emit giant radio pulses, which occur sporadically and can be hundreds to thousands of times brighter than usual pulses,” said Teruaki Enoto, author and team of the leading RIKEN cluster study for pioneering research in Wako, Saitama Prefecture, Japan, in a statement.

“After decades of observations, it has only been shown that the Crab improves its giant radio pulses with the emission of other parts of the spectrum.”

The team was able to analyze the largest amount of X-ray and radio data ever collected simultaneously from a pulsar, expanding the known energy range by thousands.

The team collectively captured 3.7 million pulsar rotations and 26,000 giant pulsar radio pulses.

Another mysterious radio exploded into space repeating a pattern. This occurs every 157 days

Giant radio pulses occur in the millionth of a second and can be unpredictable until they occur. They then release regular pulses.

The accuracy of NICER allowed X-ray recording within 100 nanoseconds of detection.

The telescope can be kept up to date

“NICER’s ability to observe bright X-ray sources is almost four times the combined brightness of both the pulsar and its nebula,” said Zaven Arzoumanian, NICER’s assistant principal investigator and head of science at Goddard Space Flight Center from NASA to Greenbelt, Maryland. , in a statement.

“These observations were not greatly affected by overcrowding (in which a detector counts two or more X-rays as a single event) and other problems that have complicated previous analyzes.”

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An analysis of the X-rays that occurred in tandem with the giant radio pulses revealed X-ray overvoltages of about 4%, which is very similar to the 3% increase in visible light that has also been associated with pulsations. .

While it may seem like a small percentage difference, X-rays are millions of times more energetic than radio waves.

The rapid and mysterious bursts helped detect missing matter in the universe, according to the study
Unlike the regular pulses released by the pulsar, these giants are likely the result of a process that produces an emission that spans the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio wavelengths to X-rays, according to NASA.

“We still don’t understand how or where pulsars produce their complex, wide-ranging emission, and it’s gratifying to have contributed another piece to the wavelength puzzle of these fascinating objects,” Enoto said.

Unlock a space mystery

Understanding more about these giant radio pulses could provide information about mysterious bursts of bursts that travel millions and billions of light years to reach Earth.

Some scientists believe that the mechanics behind the origin of the giant radio pulses of pulsars may also be the same as the origin of fast bursts. These bursts, known as FRBs, are also millisecond-length radio signals and some of them have even traced back to their source and been able to repeat them. But its origins are unknown.

It is believed that these bursts of bursts, which occur outside our galaxy, have also been associated with pulsars.

“However, the relationship between the two is still controversial, and these findings, along with upcoming discoveries about fast radio bursts, will help us understand the relationship between these phenomena,” Enoto said.

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