Dying stars are fascinating elements of our cosmos . Aside from creating some of the best cosmic postcards, they contain crucial information about our own universe.
Now a team of astronomers think they have found evidence of an extremely powerful nuclear explosion in space, one so rare that it’s unlikely we’ll ever see it again. It would be a “hyperexplosion”, a nuclear explosion inside a neutron star, they explain. Perhaps it could explain its strange behavior, according to scientists, but the conditions required to create the explosion are so unusual that we will probably never see one again to compare and contrast information.
Where has this cosmic explosion occurred?
According to the study, which is awaiting peer review and has been published on the Arxiv preprint server, the explosion appears to have taken place inside a strange neutron star located 140,000 light-years away from Earth. called MAXI J0556–332. The event may take 1,000 years to occur again, meaning it will never be seen again in our lifetime.
For context, we recall that neutron stars are the remnant cores of larger stars that have ultimately exploded in supernovae, leaving behind a city-sized object that can contain up to twice the mass of our sun.
In this case, the thermonuclear explosion baptized as MAXI J0556-332 was discovered in 2011 and, at that time, it released in three minutes the same amount of energy that our sun releases in 800 years, a figure that is soon said. Hence they have baptized this cosmic explosion as “hyperexplosion”. So colossal is the amount of pressure and temperature that this type of explosion requires, that scientists are convinced that it is something that can only be seen once every 1,000 years or so.
A hyper explosion that we have never seen before
According to experts, this gigantic explosion appears to have occurred deep within a neutron star (the ultradense and compact core of a dead star) after hundreds or perhaps thousands of years of accumulating heat and pressure.
At first, they thought that it was the result of a large amount of matter that had collided with the surface of the neutron star, but after 10 years of detailed observation of the explosion, they concluded that no, this possibility was not plausible. That another mechanism had to be at play. This is where the hyperexplosion comes in, which would have built up over hundreds or perhaps a thousand years as matter from the companion star rained down onto the neutron star’s surface every few years or so, steadily increasing the heat and pressure inside. of the star, the authors wrote.
“During the first week after the outburst ended, we noticed that this star was incredibly hot,” explained Jeroen Homan, a co-author of the paper. “About twice as hot as any other star we’ve seen before.”
If confirmed, this hyperburst would be the most powerful explosion ever detected in a neutron star, and possibly the rarest explosion detected anywhere in our cosmos: a thermonuclear explosion that occurred deep within the neutron star as a result of the nuclear fusion of oxygen or neon.
The first observation of a hyperburst.
Referencia: Dany Page et al. A “Hyperburst” in the MAXI J0556-332 Neutron Star:
Evidence for a New Type of Thermonuclear Explosion 9 febrero 2022 Preprint server ArXiv arxiv.org/pdf/2202.03962.pdf
