NASA’s Gamma Fermi-ray space telescope has confirmed stellar wrecks as the source of extreme cosmic particles. Here’s all you need to know.
How do you perceive our galaxy? Have you heard of PeVatron? NASA has announced that PeVatron is a scientific term that is the source for some of the most energetic particles known to hurl through our galaxy. “PeVatron isn’t a robot from a 1950s sci-fi movie: it’s a scientific term that is the source for some of the highest-energy particles known to be able to travel across their galaxy. PeVatron is notoriously hard to take down — but our Fermi telescope could be nearing the end of an attack,” NASA tweeted.
“Astronomers have long searched for the launch sites of some of the highest-energy protons in our galaxy. Now, a study uses 12 years of data from Fermi’s Gamma-Ray Space Telescope. NASA confirms that a supernova remnant is just such a place.” NASA said in a report. Fermi has shown that the shock waves of exploding stars accelerate particles to speeds comparable to that of light. Called cosmic rays, these particles are mainly in the form of protons, but can include atomic nuclei and electrons.
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“Because they all carry an electrical charge, their paths get messy as they glide through our galaxy’s magnetic field. Since we can no longer tell which direction they’re coming from, this obscures the problem.” hidden from their birthplace. But when these particles collide with the interstellar gas near the remnant supernova, they produce significant light in gamma rays – the most energetic light there.” NASA added.
Ke Fang, assistant professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said: “Theoreticians think that the highest energies of cosmic ray protons in the Milky Way reach a trillion electron volts, or energies. amount of PeV. “The exact nature of their sources, which we call PeVatrons, is difficult to determine.”
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Trapped by the turbulent magnetic field, the particles continuously pass through the supernova’s shock wave, increasing in speed and energy with each passage. Eventually, the rest could no longer hold them, and they flew into interstellar space. Boosted to about 10 times the energy collected by the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, PeV protons are on the cusp of escaping our galaxy altogether, the report says.
Astronomers have identified several suspected PeVatrons, including one at the center of our galaxy. Supernova remnants top the list of candidates. However, of the approximately 300 known ruins, only a few have been found to emit gamma rays with sufficiently high energies.
