Strange energy
Dec. 19th, 2002 09:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsycheMystery Energy Source Detected in Space
A mysterious cloud of high-energy electrons envelopes a young cluster of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy, astronomers announced Monday.
The cluster involves thousands of stars, all less than a million years old, packed into a region of space about 5 light-years across, with more stars probably forming as you read this. Such cramped parts of space are thought to be conducive to the production of hot gas, but not high-energy particles, astronomers said.
The particles, instead, are typically produced by exploding stars, or in the strong magnetic fields around neutron stars or black holes. There is no evidence for any of the above in this cluster, called RCW 38.
[...] "The RCW 38 observation doesn't agree with the conventional picture," said Scott Wolk of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA, lead author of an Astrophysical Journal Letters paper that described the findings earlier this month. "The data show that somehow extremely high-energy electrons are being produced there, although it is not clear how."
Electrons accelerated to energies of trillions of volts are required to account for the observed X-ray spectrum of the gas cloud surrounding the ensemble of stars, according to a statement issued with the findings.
A mysterious cloud of high-energy electrons envelopes a young cluster of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy, astronomers announced Monday.
The cluster involves thousands of stars, all less than a million years old, packed into a region of space about 5 light-years across, with more stars probably forming as you read this. Such cramped parts of space are thought to be conducive to the production of hot gas, but not high-energy particles, astronomers said.
The particles, instead, are typically produced by exploding stars, or in the strong magnetic fields around neutron stars or black holes. There is no evidence for any of the above in this cluster, called RCW 38.
[...] "The RCW 38 observation doesn't agree with the conventional picture," said Scott Wolk of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA, lead author of an Astrophysical Journal Letters paper that described the findings earlier this month. "The data show that somehow extremely high-energy electrons are being produced there, although it is not clear how."
Electrons accelerated to energies of trillions of volts are required to account for the observed X-ray spectrum of the gas cloud surrounding the ensemble of stars, according to a statement issued with the findings.
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Date: 2002-12-20 03:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2002-12-20 07:28 am (UTC)