Astronomers Have Seen A Record-Breaking Magnetic Field In Space, And It's Incredible

Deep in the Milky Way, roughly 22,000 light-years from Earth, a star unlike any other roars with a magnetic force that beats anything physicists have ever seen.

With 1.6 billion Tesla, a pulsar called Swift J0243.6+6124 broke the previous record of around 1 billion Tesla, found in the vicinity of pulsars GRO J1008-57 and 1A 0535+262.

For a little context, your average new fridge magnet comes in at around 0.001 Tesla. More powerful MRI machines manage to reach around 3 Tesla.

A few years ago, engineers were credited with hitting the semi-respectable 1,200 Tesla, keeping it in a flash of just 100 microseconds.

So it makes sense that 1.6 billion Tesla would demand some truly amazing physics. The kind that can only be achieved by massive objects crammed into impossible volumes and spinning at incredible speeds, fast enough to accelerate electrons to ridiculous speeds.

Swift J0243.6+6124 is already considered a noteworthy star. A type of super-compact cosmic heavyweight known as a pulsar, these are the only X-ray sources in our galaxy that fall into the ultra-luminous category.

It is also the only example in the Milky Way of an X-ray pulsar with a Be-type companion star feeding matter fast enough to generate jets of radio matter from its poles.

Those features alone add to the unique opportunities in our galaxy’s backyard, astronomers can’t help but study in detail.

Measuring the magnetic field of an object is much easier said than done. However strong they may be, the fields rapidly weaken to undetectable distances thousands of light years away.

Fortunately, clues can be found in the way the ultra-bright X-ray beam of electrons streaks down the magnetic racetrack, something known as the cyclotron’s resonance scattering feature.

The launch of China’s X-ray observatory Insight-HXMT in 2017 provided astrophysicists with a way to capture signatures like this in distant emissions, leading to a measure of electron energy in the GRO J1008-57 field by 2020.

Fortunately, the burst of activity on Swift J0243.6+6124 following the launch of Insight-HXMT also provides a glimpse of a high-strength magnetic field, with cyclotron resonance scattering features buried in the X-ray spectrum.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Sun Yat-Sen University in China, and the University of Tübingen in Germany, then analyzed the feature to calculate its electron energy until it peaked at an astonishing 146 kiloelectron volts. volts from the previous record holder.

Given that Swift J0243.6+6124 is the only ultra-luminescent X-ray pulsar in our galaxy, having the right size of its magnetic field gives astronomers a better idea of ​​what might be happening near its surface.

As a type of neutron star, pulsars like Swift J0243.6+6124 are made of atoms squeezed into configurations far beyond anything we can create on Earth. Its magnetic properties help exclude or support various models explaining how its extremely compact crust behaves.

In particular, the magnetic properties of neutron stars confirm the possibility that the field is complex, consisting of many poles.

It was a solid win for astrophysicists looking to understand the mysteries of some of the most exotic objects in space.

For all of us, it’s enough to try to imagine the power of the 1.6 billion Tesla magnet stuck to our fridge.

This research was published in Astrophysics Journal Letter.

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