The Chandra space observatory has revealed that an enigmatic star cluster 6000 light years from Earth is immersed in a mysterious cloud of high-energy electrons.
The cluster of stars, designated RCW 38, has an X-ray spectrum indicating that its surrounding gas cloud is filled with extremely high-energy electrons moving through a magnetic field. These high-energy particles are normally associated with supernova explosions or the neutron stars they leave behind, but not star clusters.
鈥淭he RCW 38 observation doesn鈥檛 agree with the conventional picture,鈥� says Scott Wolk of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who led the team that imaged the cluster.
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Wolk鈥檚 team, and colleagues at the European Southern Observatory in Germany, speculate that a supernova may have faded thousands of years ago leaving behind an undetected neutron star that is responsible for the observed X-rays.
Radiation beam
A neutron star emits a beam of radiation that would accelerate the cluster鈥檚 electrons enough to cause the high-energy X-ray emissions. But this beam might also be spinning in a way that means it cannot be observed directly from Earth 鈥� think of looking down on a lighthouse from an airplane.
Martin Barstow, at Leicester University in the UK, agrees with the theory. 鈥淚t sounds like a good explanation to me,鈥� he told New 女生小视频. 鈥淭he kind of radiation that they are quoting seems to be fairly typical of something like the crab nebula, and we know this is powered by a central neutron star.鈥�
The young, hot stars within the cluster will form discs that should eventually form orbiting planets. Wolk adds that the high-energy electrons would have a significant effect on the formation of such disks: 鈥淩egardless of the origin of the energetic electrons, their presence would change the chemistry of proto-stellar disks in ways that could still be manifest billions of years later.鈥�
Journal reference: Astrophysical Journal Letters (vol 582)
