6 min read
A new study of two supernova remnants, the debris left behind after stars explode, suggests the explosions came from stellar siblings that once orbited each other. The first star’s detonation sent its binary companion hurtling through space, and then, after traveling for thousands of years, the surviving star blew up too.
“Using 16 years of data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, our analysis uncovered gamma rays associated with a supernova remnant that was hidden in the glare of its neighbor, the Jellyfish Nebula, one of the brightest gamma-ray-emitting supernova remnants known,” said Miltiadis Michailidis, a postdoctoral fellow in the physics department at Stanford University in California. “There are so many striking connections between the two remnants that we conclude they’re likely related, giving us the first known example of a binary system where both stars have undergone supernova explosions.”
Michailidis presented the findings Wednesday at the 248th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena, California. A paper describing the results will appear in a future edition of Nature Communications.
The study focused on a faint supernova remnant called G189.6+3.3, which is mainly visible in X-rays. It is upstaged by its brighter and better-known neighbor, the Jellyfish Nebula (IC 443). The two star wrecks, both located in the constellation Gemini, appear to partially overlap as seen in X-rays. Recent X-ray evidence suggests that hot plasma likely associated with G189.6+3.3 may extend across the entire region, a hint that the overlap may be nearly total.
A massive star explodes when its energy-producing core runs out of fuel and collapses under its own weight, triggering an explosion that blows the star apart. The explosion’s shock wave encloses a hot cloud of debris that rapidly expands into space. So far, astronomers have cataloged about 300 supernova remnants in our galaxy.
The Fermi mission is part of NASA’s fleet of observatories monitoring the changing cosmos to help humanity better understand how the universe works. More than a decade ago, observations from Fermi’s LAT (Large Area Telescope) showed that the shock waves of supernova remnants accelerated particles to within a fraction of the speed of light, a process first proposed by physicist Enrico Fermi — the mission’s namesake — in 1949.
These high-speed particles, called cosmic rays, interact with interstellar gas to produce gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light. Protons make up 99% of cosmic ray particles. To prove that accelerated protons are responsible for the glow, astronomers search for a specific gamma-ray feature. When cosmic-ray protons smash into interstellar gas, they produce a short-lived particle called a neutral pion, which almost immediately decays into a pair of gamma rays. This emission occurs within a specific band of energies associated with the neutral pion’s mass and lies within the range detected by Fermi’s LAT instrument.
In 2013, Fermi observations proved that the Jellyfish Nebula, which is interacting with part of a glowing cloud of hydrogen gas known as Sharpless 249, produced gamma rays through this mechanism. Its neighbor, G189.6+3.3, was discovered in 1994 as part of an X-ray survey by the German-led ROSAT (Roentgen Satellite) mission.
A bright filament of gas lies between the overlapping remnants. New observations of this feature reveal that the shock wave from G189.6+3.3 slammed into dense interstellar gas there and dramatically slowed, key evidence that both remnants are interacting with the same cloud system.
Astronomers think the Jellyfish Nebula is also a candidate PeVatron, a cosmic particle accelerator capable of boosting protons to energies so high they could nearly escape our galaxy. Such particles can produce gamma rays with trillions of times more energy than visible light. Finding a second particle accelerator near the Jellyfish Nebula could offer scientists new clues for how supernova remnants develop into PeVatrons.
“The overlapping remnants, a connecting gas filament, and the availability of data from Fermi and other facilities motivated us to delve into this complex but little-studied region,” said co-author Marianne Lemoine-Goumard, an astrophysicist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) based at the University of Bordeaux. “With Fermi’s LAT instrument, we found gamma-ray emission associated with accelerated protons in the northern part of the fainter remnant. If both remnants are interacting with the same structure, then they must share a common distance from us.”
The team concludes the remnants lie about 6,000 light-years away, their explosion centers are separated by roughly 40 light-years projected onto the plane of the sky, and the original stars may have been 20 or more times the Sun’s mass.
Estimates of the remnants’ ages vary widely, but the team concludes that the age of the Jellyfish Nebula is 8,000 to 9,000 years, while G189.6+3.3 is between 20,000 to 110,000 years old. This means the delay between the explosions could have extended for up to 100,000 years.
In addition, the team conducted computer simulations of a million massive binary systems. They show that systems where the stars orbit close enough to exchange matter and interact during their lives can readily produce dual supernova explosions with similar separations and time delays as those found for the remnants. The team also estimated that the chance of randomly encountering this combination of observed spatial alignment and compatible distances to be less than 1%, strongly supporting a physical association.
“The evidence we’ve compiled — including observations across the spectrum, the chemical and physical properties of the remnants, simulations, and more — paints a compelling picture of a dual supernova event,” said Michailidis.
This study identifies a unique possible example of a binary system where both stars exploded as supernovae and left behind separate, detectable supernova remnants. Astronomers think that most massive stars form in binary or multiple-star systems. The Jellyfish Nebula/G189.6+3.3 complex offers astronomers a rare opportunity to study how massive binary stars evolve, exchange matter, explode, and experience velocity changes — called kicks — induced by the supernova blast. It also provides a powerful new laboratory for understanding how coupled supernova remnants behave, including how they accelerate particles, generate gamma rays, and shape their surrounding environments.
“Fermi’s gamma-ray observations of supernova remnants continue to reveal the dynamic lives of stars,” said Elizabeth Hays, the Fermi project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We can now connect the glowing remains of two massive stars to a powerful pair that evolved together over thousands of years.”
By Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
6 min read
A new study of two supernova remnants, the debris left behind after stars explode, suggests the explosions came from stellar siblings that once orbited each other. The first star’s detonation sent its binary companion hurtling through space, and then, after traveling for thousands of years, the surviving star blew up too.
“Using 16 years of data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, our analysis uncovered gamma rays associated with a supernova remnant that was hidden in the glare of its neighbor, the Jellyfish Nebula, one of the brightest gamma-ray-emitting supernova remnants known,” said Miltiadis Michailidis, a postdoctoral fellow in the physics department at Stanford University in California. “There are so many striking connections between the two remnants that we conclude they’re likely related, giving us the first known example of a binary system where both stars have undergone supernova explosions.”
Michailidis presented the findings Wednesday at the 248th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena, California. A paper describing the results will appear in a future edition of Nature Communications.
The study focused on a faint supernova remnant called G189.6+3.3, which is mainly visible in X-rays. It is upstaged by its brighter and better-known neighbor, the Jellyfish Nebula (IC 443). The two star wrecks, both located in the constellation Gemini, appear to partially overlap as seen in X-rays. Recent X-ray evidence suggests that hot plasma likely associated with G189.6+3.3 may extend across the entire region, a hint that the overlap may be nearly total.
A massive star explodes when its energy-producing core runs out of fuel and collapses under its own weight, triggering an explosion that blows the star apart. The explosion’s shock wave encloses a hot cloud of debris that rapidly expands into space. So far, astronomers have cataloged about 300 supernova remnants in our galaxy.
The Fermi mission is part of NASA’s fleet of observatories monitoring the changing cosmos to help humanity better understand how the universe works. More than a decade ago, observations from Fermi’s LAT (Large Area Telescope) showed that the shock waves of supernova remnants accelerated particles to within a fraction of the speed of light, a process first proposed by physicist Enrico Fermi — the mission’s namesake — in 1949.
These high-speed particles, called cosmic rays, interact with interstellar gas to produce gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light. Protons make up 99% of cosmic ray particles. To prove that accelerated protons are responsible for the glow, astronomers search for a specific gamma-ray feature. When cosmic-ray protons smash into interstellar gas, they produce a short-lived particle called a neutral pion, which almost immediately decays into a pair of gamma rays. This emission occurs within a specific band of energies associated with the neutral pion’s mass and lies within the range detected by Fermi’s LAT instrument.
In 2013, Fermi observations proved that the Jellyfish Nebula, which is interacting with part of a glowing cloud of hydrogen gas known as Sharpless 249, produced gamma rays through this mechanism. Its neighbor, G189.6+3.3, was discovered in 1994 as part of an X-ray survey by the German-led ROSAT (Roentgen Satellite) mission.
A bright filament of gas lies between the overlapping remnants. New observations of this feature reveal that the shock wave from G189.6+3.3 slammed into dense interstellar gas there and dramatically slowed, key evidence that both remnants are interacting with the same cloud system.
Astronomers think the Jellyfish Nebula is also a candidate PeVatron, a cosmic particle accelerator capable of boosting protons to energies so high they could nearly escape our galaxy. Such particles can produce gamma rays with trillions of times more energy than visible light. Finding a second particle accelerator near the Jellyfish Nebula could offer scientists new clues for how supernova remnants develop into PeVatrons.
“The overlapping remnants, a connecting gas filament, and the availability of data from Fermi and other facilities motivated us to delve into this complex but little-studied region,” said co-author Marianne Lemoine-Goumard, an astrophysicist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) based at the University of Bordeaux. “With Fermi’s LAT instrument, we found gamma-ray emission associated with accelerated protons in the northern part of the fainter remnant. If both remnants are interacting with the same structure, then they must share a common distance from us.”
The team concludes the remnants lie about 6,000 light-years away, their explosion centers are separated by roughly 40 light-years projected onto the plane of the sky, and the original stars may have been 20 or more times the Sun’s mass.
Estimates of the remnants’ ages vary widely, but the team concludes that the age of the Jellyfish Nebula is 8,000 to 9,000 years, while G189.6+3.3 is between 20,000 to 110,000 years old. This means the delay between the explosions could have extended for up to 100,000 years.
In addition, the team conducted computer simulations of a million massive binary systems. They show that systems where the stars orbit close enough to exchange matter and interact during their lives can readily produce dual supernova explosions with similar separations and time delays as those found for the remnants. The team also estimated that the chance of randomly encountering this combination of observed spatial alignment and compatible distances to be less than 1%, strongly supporting a physical association.
“The evidence we’ve compiled — including observations across the spectrum, the chemical and physical properties of the remnants, simulations, and more — paints a compelling picture of a dual supernova event,” said Michailidis.
This study identifies a unique possible example of a binary system where both stars exploded as supernovae and left behind separate, detectable supernova remnants. Astronomers think that most massive stars form in binary or multiple-star systems. The Jellyfish Nebula/G189.6+3.3 complex offers astronomers a rare opportunity to study how massive binary stars evolve, exchange matter, explode, and experience velocity changes — called kicks — induced by the supernova blast. It also provides a powerful new laboratory for understanding how coupled supernova remnants behave, including how they accelerate particles, generate gamma rays, and shape their surrounding environments.
“Fermi’s gamma-ray observations of supernova remnants continue to reveal the dynamic lives of stars,” said Elizabeth Hays, the Fermi project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We can now connect the glowing remains of two massive stars to a powerful pair that evolved together over thousands of years.”
By Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
The post NASA’s Fermi Mission Uncovers Possible Sibling Supernova Remnants appeared first on NASA Science.
In 2021, scientists detected a cosmic ray entering Earth’s atmosphere with as much kinetic energy as a fast-moving tennis ball, all contained in a single subatomic particle. Named the “Amaterasu particle” after the Japanese sun goddess, the event left researchers questioning its origin because its arrival direction pointed to a region of space with no known source capable of producing such energy.
Researchers at Penn State now suggest that the puzzle may stem more from assumptions about the particle’s composition rather than its missing source.
A recent study in Physical Review Letters suggests that the Amaterasu particle, along with other extremely energetic cosmic rays, may actually be atomic nuclei heavier than iron. If correct, the idea could change how researchers search for the sources of cosmic rays.
Ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays are some of the rarest and most violent phenomena in nature. These particles slam into Earth’s atmosphere with more than 100 exa-electron volts of energy, which is about 10 million times more than what the Large Hadron Collider can produce. The Amaterasu particle, found by the Telescope Array in Utah in May 2021 and reported in Science in 2023, had about 244 exa-electron volts of energy. This makes it one of the most energetic natural events ever recorded.
The mystery extended not only to the particle’s energy, but also to its origin. It came from the direction of the Local Void, which is an almost empty area of space next to the Milky Way, where there is no known source that could create such a powerful particle.
“The origins and acceleration mechanisms of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays have been among the biggest mysteries in the field for more than 60 years, since the first example was reported,” said Kohta Murase, professor of physics and astronomy at Penn State’s Eberly College of Science and the study’s lead researcher.
The Penn State team ran computational simulations to study how particles of different masses travel through intergalactic space. They found that atomic nuclei heavier than iron, known as ultraheavy nuclei, lose energy much more slowly than protons or lighter nuclei as they move through the radiation fields of deep space.
Most research on cosmic rays has assumed that the most extreme events involve protons, which are the simplest and lightest atomic nuclei. Ultraheavy nuclei lose energy much more slowly during their journey, allowing them to reach Earth carrying far more energy than lighter particles traveling similar distances. That makes them strong candidates for the most powerful cosmic ray events we’ve seen, including the Amaterasu particle.
“When we detect individual cosmic-ray particles such as the Amaterasu particle here on Earth, we can often use their energies, arrival directions and expected magnetic deflections to infer their possible cosmic sources,” Murase said.
The hypothesis that these particles are ultraheavy nuclei also changes the range of possible sources. If the particles are indeed heavier nuclei rather than protons, their production would require some of the most extreme environments in the universe. The researchers identify collapsars, which are massive stars collapsing directly into black holes, and binary neutron-star mergers as likely candidates. Both phenomena are also associated with gamma-ray bursts, which are among the most energetic explosions known to science.
The team’s calculations set new theoretical limits on how much ultraheavy nuclei may contribute to the overall population of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays. Murase also noted that these sources could help explain a possible asymmetry in the ultrahigh-energy cosmic-ray spectrum between the northern and southern hemispheres.
“The most promising sites for producing and accelerating such ultraheavy nuclei are massive star deaths involving explosive collapse into black holes or strongly magnetized neutron stars, as well as binary neutron-star mergers known to be powerful gravitational-wave emitters,” Murase said.
The researchers stress that they are not saying all ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays are ultraheavy nuclei, but some of the most extreme ones might be. This could change what scientists look for in future studies. New observatories and upgrades, like AugerPrime in Argentina and the planned Global Cosmic Ray Observatory, could test these ideas. If ultraheavy nuclei are important, future observations should find evidence that protons alone cannot explain.
More than six decades after scientists first detected ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays, researchers may finally have a new clue about what the most extreme particles in the universe are made of.
Austin Burgess is a writer and researcher with a background in sales, marketing, and data analytics. He holds an MBA, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a data analytics certification. His work focuses on breaking scientific developments, with an emphasis on emerging biology, cognitive neuroscience, and archaeological discoveries.
The giant planet’s bow shock isn’t just deflecting the solar wind, it’s acting as a powerful particle accelerator, firing electrons to relativistic energies of at least 1 MeV, according to a new analysis of data from NASA’s Juno spacecraft.
The post Jupiter Accelerates Electrons to Near-Light Speed, Offering Clues to Cosmic Ray Origins appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
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