Neutron Star Defies Current Models

A neutron star has been located 24,000 light years away in the constellation of Cassiopeia, that is defying conventionally established theories, by spewing out relativistic jets despite its strong magnetic field. Previously, such jets have only been seen in neutron stars with significantly weaker fields, and were not thought to be possible with such strong fields present.

When a massive star goes supernova, most of its material is blown off into space. If it then collapses into a super dense
core with less than 3x the mass of our sun, it becomes a neutron star. This collapse causes the magnetic field of the star to strengthen into a field trillion of times stronger than our Sun. Then over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, the field grows weaker. In the meantime, the field is strong enough to gather matter from surrounding space, in a process called accretion.

Neutron Star. (NASA)

The neutron star in question is part of Swift J0243.6+6124, a binary system discovered in last October by the Swift Observatory. This neutron star is accreting material from it's twin star in the system, and carries a magnetic field 10 trillion times greater than our Sun.

Relativistic jets are streams of particles and radiation that shoot out from the poles of accreting objects, and are a common stellar occurrence, found emitting from birthing stars, white dwarves and black holes as well. These jets have never been detected coming from neutron stars that still retain a magnetic field as strong as this newly found neutron star, however, and scientists did not think such a phenomenon was possible. The absence of jets from these stars was thought to mean that the fields were preventing the jets from arising, but this explanation is now being called into question by the new discovery.

Relativistic Jet. (NASA/Hubble)

This discovery was made by when astronomers noticed X-ray emissions coming from the area, and then they compared radio waves characteristic of jets with other well known sources, confirming that a jet was present, although hundreds of times weaker than those from other studied neutron stars. Some researchers theorize that the star's rotational energy may be powering the jets, which would be consistent with its unusually weak nature.