Ideas, Inventions And Innovations
Study: X-Rays Surrounding ‘Magnificent 7’ May Be Traces of Sought-After Particle
Researchers say they may have found proof of theorized axions, and possibly dark matter, around group of neutron stars.
An artistic rendering of the XMM-Newton (X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission) space telescope. A study of archival data from the XMM-Newton and the Chandra X-ray space telescopes found evidence of high levels of X-ray emission from the nearby Magnificent Seven neutron stars, which may arise from the hypothetical particles known as axions.
A new study, led by a theoretical physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), suggests that never-before-observed particles called axions may be the source of unexplained, high-energy X-ray emissions surrounding a group of neutron stars.
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Excess x-rays from neutron stars could lead to discovery of new particle
A team of scientists, including a University of Minnesota researcher, have found that mysterious x-rays detected from nearby neutron stars may be the first evidence of axions, hypothetical particles that many physicists believe make up dark matter. If their theory is confirmed, the researchers’ findings could help physicists unravel several mysteries of the universe.
Their paper is published in Physical Review Letters, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Physical Society.
There are many kinds of particles that make up matter in the universe. The most common are protons, neutrons, and electrons. These particles collide with each other in certain settings, such as inside a star’s core or in particle accelerators built by scientists on Earth. Axions have long been elusive to physicists because they are “weakly interacting,” which means they rarely collide with other part
A new study, led by a theoretical physicist at Berkeley Lab, suggests that never-before-observed particles called axions may be the source of unexplained, high-energy X-ray emissions surrounding a group of neutron stars.
University of New Mexico Ph.D. Student Siavash Nikravesh and Mechanical Engineering Professor and Department Chair Yu-Lin Shen, using Center for Advanced Research Computing resources, have developed a new three-dimensional modeling approach to solving deformation problems, making it easier to design a wide variety of products including flexible electronics.
The project is being funded by The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium in the hopes that this technology may be used to design NASA equipment.
The factors that determine exactly how a material will buckle when subjected to force are numerous and complex. These types of calculations, called deformation instability problems, typically require multiple steps of analysis to solve, consuming a great amount of time and resources.