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If they strike Earth they will annihilate us

If they strike Earth they will annihilate us

Thanks to the HESS observatory in Namibia, researchers have intercepted the most powerful gamma rays ever seen in space. These monstrous, currently inexplicable electromagnetic radiations, if they struck the Earth, would wipe out humanity and all other forms of life in an instant. This is what they are made of.

Illustration of the Vela pulsar. Credit: DESY Science Communication Lab

Scientists have picked up on space More powerful Gamma rays never. They are so powerful that… power Measure equals 20 TeV“About ten trillion times the energy of visible light.” The discoverers explained in a press release. If there is a package of radiation With such a force striking the entire Earth, humanity and all other life forms would be instantly annihilated. Fortunately, the source of these massive energy pulses is… Pulsar Villa In the southern constellation of the same name, it is located in 1000 light years From our planet. We currently do not know how such intense electromagnetic radiation is produced.

The most energetic gamma rays ever were intercepted by an international research team led by scientists from the HESS Collaboration, who worked closely with colleagues from the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory gGmbH in Bologna, from the Space Sciences Division – Naval Research Laboratory in Washington of the Australian Agency. CSIRO and other institutes. The researchers, coordinated by Dr. Arash Janati Atay from the Department of Particles and Cosmology (APC) in France, captured these images thanks to…Hess Observatory (High Energy Stereoscopic System) is located in Namibia, Africa, where there are some of the darkest skies and most stars on Earth, and is extremely valuable for astronomical and astrophysical studies.

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These gamma rays – electromagnetic radiation with a very short wavelength and very high frequency – are emitted by the Vela pulsar, which is the only known star, besides the Krab pulsar, that emits gamma rays of the order Tera electron volts. Pulsars are Neutron stars rotate very quicklythe remains of what remained after a Supernova – Starburst – One Huge star. Basically, they are Dead stars. Among the most fascinating features are these mysterious objects, first discovered by a British astronomer Mrs. Jocelyn Bell Burnell In 1967, the diameter narrowed to just one Twenty kilometersa Very strong magnetic field that it Scary intensity. “These dead stars are composed almost entirely of neutrons and are incredibly dense: a teaspoon of their matter has a mass of more than five billion tons, or about 900 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza,” said study co-author Emma. De Una Wilhelmi of DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron),

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Because of its very rapid rotation – in the case of the Vela pulsar 11 times per second – These beings emit Particle beams At very regular intervals, the flashes of which can be captured by dedicated instruments from Earth. Although they may look like strange pulsating cosmic beacons of artificial origin (hence their name), they are completely natural. Experts explained that Vela’s pulsar “is the brightest in the radio range of the electromagnetic spectrum and the brightest stationary source of cosmic gamma rays in the gigaelectronvolt range.” Therefore, it is a truly special being. Through comprehensive analysis of its emissions by the HESS observatory, researchers were able to detect gamma rays of incredible power, with an energy of tens of teraelectronvolts (TeV), “an energy approximately 200 times greater than all the radiation detected by this object before.” said study co-author Christo Venter, a researcher at Northwest University in South Africa. It is a gamma ray so powerful that it defies knowledge of its origin. In practice, scientists cannot explain how they are produced by a pulsar.

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“This result challenges our previous knowledge of pulsars and requires a rethink of how these natural accelerators work,” said Dr. Arash Janati Atay. “The conventional scheme according to which particles are accelerated along magnetic field lines inside or slightly outside the magnetosphere cannot adequately explain our observations. Are we perhaps seeing particles accelerated by a so-called magnetic reconnection process outside the cylinder of light, which still retains a What’s with the rotation pattern? But even this scenario struggles to explain how such intense radiation could be produced. For now, we only know that the Vela pulsar produces the most impressive electromagnetic pulses ever seen.being, at least known to man. Search details”Discovery of a radiation component from the Vela pulsar reaching 20 TeVIt was published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Astronomy.