A pulsar is sending out a filament of high-energy particles, including positrons, the anti-matter counterpart to electrons.
Why is there so much antimatter in the Universe? Ordinary matter is far more plentiful than antimatter, but scientists keep detecting more and more antimatter in the form of positrons. More positrons reach Earth than standard models predict. Where do they come from?Positrons are the antimatter equivalent to electrons. They’re the same mass, but they’re positively charged rather than negatively charged.
” It’s published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, and the authors are Martijn de Vries from Stanford University and Roger W. Romani from Stanford University. The positrons, along with electrons, are contained in the pulsar’s stellar wind, and usually, the pulsar’s powerful magnetic fields keep the wind confined. But something else is happening with PSR J2030+4415.
After the particles escaped, they found new magnetic field lines to follow. They slowed and moved along the interstellar magnetic field lines at about one-third the speed of light. They emitted x-rays, and that’s what Chandra sees as the extraordinarily long filament. This image from the study shows PSR J2030+4415 as seen by two instruments. The red, green, and blue are H-alpha spectral emissions as imaged with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph on the Gemini Telescope North. The smoothed green contours show x-ray emissions observed with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer on the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Some of the x-ray emissions are from field stars and background sources, but the pulsar wind nebula and the filament are clearly visible.
“J2030’s extreme one-sidedness may be connected with the unusually small spin-velocity angle inferred from the H-alpha bubble velocity,” the authors of the newer study write. “… this ensures that one magnetic hemisphere is much closer to the swept-up magnetic field at the apex.” This fosters the reconnection to the ISM field lines. That reconnection allows the positrons to escape along the ISM field lines, creating the extraordinarily long x-ray filaments seen in the Chandra images.
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