Far in the Milky Way galaxy, 21,000 light-years from Earth, astronomers have seen the fastest rotating magnetar (and possibly the youngest) ever seen. And that’s just the beginning of what makes this star weird.
Magnetars is a unique kind neutron star, which is the collapsed core of supergiant stars that died in supernova events. What distinguishes magnetars from other neutron stars is that they possess extremely powerful magnetic fields – the strongest in the known universe. They can also explode without warning and are quite difficult to spot. In fact, before this object was discovered, there were only 30 known magnetars, compared to the thousands (about 3000) known neutron stars.
Now, scientists studying the sky with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory – a space telescope looking out for black holes, supernovae and more – think that a newly discovered magnetar known as J1818.0-1607 could be the fastest spinner and possibly also the latest magnetar, according to a statement. They also found a myriad of other strange things that make this object unique.
Gallery: amazing photos by NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory
Astronomers first saw this magnetar on 12 March 2020 NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Telescope. Later, Harsha Blumer, an astronomer at the University of West Virginia, and Samar Safi-Harb, a physics professor at the University of Manitoba in Canada, observed the magnetar with the help of Chandra and they noticed some strange things that the made magnetar stand out. .
One of the first things that seemed intriguing to this particular object was how young it appeared. The team estimated that the magnetar is about 500 years old, which, if true, would make the youngest yet discovered. They determined the age of the object by measuring how fast the rotational speed of the magnetar slows down (it rotates more slowly over time) while assuming that the object began to rotate much faster.
The second thing the team really noticed was how fast the object rotates, as it seems to rotate completely once every 1.4 seconds (which is really very fast).
Other astronomers have also looked at J1818.0-1607 and observed the magnetar using radio telescopes such as Karl Jansky’s Very Large Array (VLA) from the National Science Foundation and found that it emits radio waves, a quality it shares with known objects. as “rotation-driven pulses.” It is a type of neutron star that emits radiation that we emit on earth as ‘pulses’ of radio waves.
Blumer and Safi-Harb also found that the magnetar does not convert the rotating energy of its rotations into X-ray emissions as effectively as expected for a magnetar. In fact, it is the conversion of this energy at the rate that is most prevalent in rotation-driven pulse, another interesting commonality between the two objects.
The last strange thing the researchers found about this young, fast star was that, although most magnets around this age would have left a rubble of material left over from the supernova that created the object, the researchers only possible evidence found a supernova remnant with J1818.0-1607, and this debris was quite far from the object.
According to their estimate, if the object had traveled so far from the magnetar, the object would have traveled at faster speeds than ever with a neutron star.
This work has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Email Chelsea Gohd at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.