The James Webb Space Telescope has provided astronomers with evidence of a neutron star that is supposedly hiding at the center of debris left behind by an old supernova.
A star in a nearby galaxy went supernova in 1987, and its fiery demise was detected with the naked eye in Earth's nighttime sky for several months.
Scientists were able to determine when the core of the star collapsed, and the remnants of the cosmic explosion are expected to turn into one of two things: a black hole or a neutron star.
Neutron Star Inside Supernova Debris
The former is something that has an enormous gravitational pull that nothing, not even light, can escape. On the other hand, the latter is the most dense object in the universe that humans know of besides a black hole.
The problem with the study of this particular supernova was that there was so much debris that astronomers could not see beyond the dust. However, James Webb was able to cut through the clutter by peering in infrared light and observed two telltale chemical signatures, argon and sulfur, of a pulsing super-hot neutron star, as per the Associated Press.
Since the explosion was relatively recent and well-tracked, the new discovery should assist astronomers in better understanding this particular type of cosmic oddball and its predecessor that helped create important elements, such as carbon and iron.
The neutron star that James Webb observed is only 12 miles from end to end, but it already weighs 1.5 times that of our sun. It is densely packed with very little space between parts of its atoms. Experts believe that the aftermath of supernova 1987A is most likely the only time modern astronomy has observed a neutron star's birth and early years.
An astrophysicist at Stockholm University in Sweden, Claes Fransson, said that neutron stars are the most exotic objects in the universe besides black holes. He added that experts know about these cosmic objects from the 1960s but have not seen any of them being formed.
Studying a Neutron Star's Early Stages of Life
Supernovae are the explosive final death throes of some massive stars and blast out within a few hours. The brightness of these explosions peaks within a few months. Then, the remains of the exploding star will continue to evolve rapidly over the following decades, according to WebbTelescope.
The supernova the researchers studied is located roughly 160,000 light-years from our planet in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Roughly two hours before the first visible-light observation of SN 1987A, three observatories on Earth detected a burst of neutrinos that lasted only a few seconds.
During a press briefing on Sunday, Patrick Kavanagh, an experimental physicist from Maynooth University, said that the neutron star is more massive than our solar system's star. He noted that one teaspoon of it weighs more than Mount Everest.
He added that identifying the neutron star left behind by the supernova would provide astronomers with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study one still in its early stages of life, said Business Insider.
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