Evidence of long-sought speculative grains may have been hidden in plain sight (X-ray) all this time.
The X-ray emission emanating from a collection of neutron stars called the Magnificent Seven is so large that it could have come from axions, a type of material long thought to have formed in it. the dense hearts of these dead things, scientists have proved.
If their conclusions are confirmed, this discovery could help unravel some of the mysteries of the physical Universe – including the nature of the dark matter that holds it all together.
“Detecting axions has been one of the great endeavors in high-energy energy physics, both in theory and in experiments,” said astronaut Raymond Co. of the University of Minnesota.
“We think there may be axions, but we haven’t discovered them yet. You can think of axions as ghost grains. They can be anywhere in the Universe, but they don’t interact. strongly support us so that we do not have any comments on them yet. “
The axions of ultra-low particles are massive, first theorized in the 1970s to solve the question of why strong atomic forces pursue something called cost-equilibrium, when most models say they don’t have to.
Axions are predicted by many models of string theory – a proposed solution to the tension between general relativity and quantum mechanics – and axions of specific masses are also strong advocates of dark matter. So scientists have a number of very good reasons to look for them.
If they are present, axions are expected to be extracted within stars. These stellar axions are not identical to dark subject axions, but they would mean other types of axes.
One way to detect axions is by looking for excessive radiation. Axions are expected to rot to pairs of photons in the presence of a magnetic field – so if more electromagnetic radiation is found than should be in an area where this decay is expected to occur, this could be evidence of axions. .
In this case, too much X-ray radiation is just as astronauts found when they look at the amazing seven.
These neutron stars – the hearts that fell in dead stars that died in a supernova – are not grouped together, but have a number of common features. They are all isolated neutron stars around middle age, a few hundred thousand years from stellar death.
They all cool, emitting low-energy (soft) X-rays while doing so. They all have strong magnetic fields, trillions of times stronger than Earth’s fields, powerful enough to induce axion decay. And they’re all pretty much nearby, within 1,500 light-years from Earth.
This makes them an excellent laboratory for looking for axions, and when a team of researchers – led by lead author and physicist Benjamin Safdi of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory – studied the the amazing seven with multiple telescopes, they marked high-energy X (hard) emissions are not expected for such neutron stars.
In space, however, there are many processes that can produce radiation, so the team had to carefully study other sources that could be emitted. Pulses, for example, emit solid X-radiation; but the other types of radiation that pulsars emit, such as radio waves, are not present in the seven magnets.
Another possibility is that undissolved sources near the neutron stars could cause the X-ray solid scattering. But the databases used by the team, from two different space X-ray observatories – XMM-Newton and Chandra – showed that the emission came from the neutron stars. Nor, the team found, is the signal likely to be the result of a collection of soft X-ray emissions.
“We are very confident that there is too much of this, and very confident that there is something new in it,” said Safdi. “If we are 100 per cent sure that what we are seeing is something new, that would be huge. That would be a big change in physics. “
That is not to say that the rest is new grain. This could be an unrecognized astrophysical process. Or it could be something as simple as an invention from the telescopes or data processing.
“We are not claiming that we have found the axion yet, but we are saying that the additional X-ray photons can be explained by axions,” said Co. “It is an interesting finding of the rest in the X-ray photons. ray, and is an interesting ability that is already consistent with our definition of axions. “
The next step is to try to confirm what has been found. If the rest is emitted by axions, most of the radiation should be emitted at a higher energy than XMM-Newton and Chandra are able to detect. The team hopes to use a newer telescope, NASA’s NuSTAR, to look at the amazing seven across a wider range of waves.
Magnetic black-and-white stars could be another place to look for axion propagation. Like the amazing seven, these objects have strong magnetic fields and are not expected to emit hard X-ray emissions.
“This is a very strong start that this is something beyond the Standard Model if we see too much X-ray there as well,” Safdi said.
The research was published in Corporate Review Letters.