NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory reveals a neutron star powering a gigantic jet that rivals black holes and their jets.
For the first time ever, scientists have found a neutron star with a powerful large-scale jet, something previously only believed to accompany black holes.
The neutron star, Circinus X-1, is an exploded star that now consists of just the densely packed neutron core a mere 20 kilometers in diameter. From this small massive object blast jets that extend five light-years out. While super-massive black holes can power jets that are several million light-years long, the neutron star and its jets are large relative to the size of the object that powers them. Therefore, the neutron star is as efficient as a black hole in creating a jet considering the size of the source.
"This is a critical result," says Sebastian Heinz of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Heinz led the team that made the discovery. "The fact that neutron stars are just as efficient at making jets, despite having shallower gravitational potential and none of the gimmicks that spinning black holes have, is an important new insight."
Circinus X-1 is a binary system where two stars rotate around each other. Located in the southern hemisphere constellation of Circinus and about 20,000 light-years from Earth, Circinus X-1 has a companion star that is shedding its material onto the neutron star. The material spirals inward toward the neutron star and accretes onto the surface, powering the plasma jets. When the jets reach interstellar space, they bubble into large lobes of radio-emitting gas, which have been seen on previous images.
There is much about these jets that are still unknown. "Jets are these mysterious beams of matter. These are plasma beams that get launched in the inner regions of accretion flows," explains Heinz. Finding a neutron star powering a massive jet instead of a black hole has brought the realization that "gravity appears to be the key to creating these jets, not some trick of the event horizon." A startlingly high percentage of the energy that comes from the infalling matter must be used to power the jet.
Learning about powerful jets aids scientists in discovering how the universe works. "People have realized black holes and jets from black holes are important for energizing the universe," says Heinz.. "They carry huge amounts of energy in kinetic form, and the release of this energy is very important in terms of how structures form in the universe at large."
Read more about what black holes are or what would happen to Earth if the Sun became a black hole.
