Astrology

Astronomers record gas falling onto a neutron star at 335,000 miles per hour

A hypergiant star named Wray 997 is shedding enormous amounts of gas onto a much smaller neutron star called GX 301-2, producing an energy release that Japanese scientists say has never been documented before, the Daily Express US reports. The event sits in the BP Crucis system, 13,000 light-years from Earth, and was captured with an advanced X-ray imaging and spectroscopy instrument, according to the outlet.

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Gas clocked at 335,000 miles per hour#

Researchers writing in Science Advances propose that the neutron star passes through a dense stream of gas flowing from Wray 977 and pulls some of it in, with the strongest flares happening where that stream is most concentrated, the Daily Express US reports. The team monitored the system for about 16 hours near the end of a strong flare, and shifts in its X-ray spectrum showed gas falling toward the neutron star at roughly 335,000 mph, about 500 times the speed of sound, according to the outlet.

Wray 977 is estimated at about 60 times the size of the sun and 40 times its mass, and its brightness comes from a steady outflow of ionized gas that scientists call a stellar wind, the Daily Express US reports. Because the system lies 13,000 light-years away, the flares recorded now actually happened approximately 13 millennia ago, according to the outlet.

One of the researchers said, "We've never before seen clear indications of wind plasma falling onto a compact object. We can now test our understanding of these processes in much greater detail," the Daily Express US reports.

Other distant objects drawing new scrutiny#

Elsewhere, astronomers have questioned whether hypernovas, explosions proposed to be ten times more powerful than ordinary supernovas, happen at all, Space reports. Team leader Anmol Aggarwal of University College London said unevenly distributed elements once blamed on hypernovas can be explained by ordinary supernovas that fling out matter asymmetrically, according to Space.

Separately, a fast radio burst named FRB 20240304B has been traced to a galaxy roughly 11 billion light-years away, more than doubling the distance of the previous record holder, the Economic Times reports. Manisha Caleb, co-leader of the research team at the Sydney Institute for Astronomy, said the signal, emitted when the universe was about three billion years old, also carries information about the matter it passed through on its way to Earth, according to the outlet.

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