Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi there,
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest

Three new types of object found in Milky Way

  • 07-02-2007 12:21am
    #1
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 1,428 Mod ✭✭✭✭


    Three new types of object have been discovered in our galaxy: huge gamma-ray clouds, dense X-ray engines almost hidden in cocoons of dust, and bubbles blown by the wind from giant stars.
    All three discoveries were reported on Monday at a conference at Stanford University in California, US.
    Two come courtesy of the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS), an array of four telescopes in Namibia that detects photons of extremely high energy. When one of these gamma rays hits the atmosphere, it produces a flash of blue light that HESS can pick up.
    HESS has seen such gamma rays coming from Westerlund 2, a cluster of massive, bright stars about 25,000 light years away. The emission is too diffuse to be coming directly from the stars. "The gamma-ray source is much larger than the cluster itself," says team member Olaf Reimer of Stanford.
    Instead, he thinks the emission is generated by winds from several massive stars within the cluster. Called Wolf-Rayet stars, they are so bright their light blasts gas off of them and out into space. The total energy in this stellar wind over the course of each star's brief life is similar to that of a supernova explosion.

    Particle accelerator

    "The solar wind [from our Sun] is a gentle breeze compared with these things," says Luke Drury, a theoretician from the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in Ireland.
    As the winds slam into interstellar gas around the cluster, they create

    Continue Reading


Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,005 ✭✭✭✭Flukey


    Interesting.


Advertisement