Runaway pulsar has astronomers scratching their heads


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Runaway pulsar has astronomers scratching their heads

 

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The Lighthouse Nebula pulsar (bottom right) with a trailing 'wind nebula' and its 37-light year x-ray jet perpendicular to the direction it is travelling (Source: NASA/Chandra/CSIRO)

 

A newly discovered fast-moving pulsar streaking across the galaxy with enormous x-ray jets, defies the laws of physics, according to scientists.

A report in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, says the pulsar called IGR J1104-6103, also known as the Lighthouse nebula, is moving at more than eight million kilometres per hour and generating the longest jets in the galaxy.

Pulsars are spinning neutron stars, the left over core of a massive star after it explodes as a supernova.

But according to study co-author, Associate Professor Miroslav Filipovic of the University of Western Sydney, "we haven't seen anything like this before".

"It's moving at great speed, wobbling like a top as it spins, and creating these powerful high energy particle jets 37 light years long; ten times the distance between us and the nearest star."

The pulsar's wobbling motion causes the jets to twist into a distinct corkscrew shape.

"One of the biggest mysteries is that we only see these jets in x-rays, there's no radio signature, that's totally shocking to us," says Filipovic.

"Pulsars were first discovered because of their characteristic radio signals, so this is extremely difficult to explain through any theories we have at the moment."

 

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