Earth has been hit by blast of energy from a dead star so powerful that scientists can’t fully explain it.
The intense gamma rays – detected using a vast system of telescopes in Namibia – would sizzle humans to a crisp if we were exposed to them.
They originate from the Vela Pulsar around 1,000 light years from Earth, which has already been compared in appearance to the mask from the Phantom of the Opera.
Pulsars are the remains of a massive star that blew up an estimated 10,000 years ago as a supernova, then collapsed in on itself.
British astronomer Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell was the first person to discover a pulsar in 1967, but this study marks the highest energy rays from a pulsar yet seen.
The Vela Pulsar is located about 1,000 light years from Earth in the Southern sky in the constellation Vela
Sadly, it doesn’t mean that aliens are trying to contact us, according to study author Arache Djannati-Atai from the Astroparticle & Cosmology (APC) laboratory in France.
‘It is true that when they were first discovered back in 1967, the sources were named LGM1 and LGM2 for little green men, but that was almost a joke,’ he told MailOnline.
‘We know for sure pulsars are corpses of massive stars and there is no need for any alien intelligence to produce the signals that we see on Earth.’
Pulsars are described as left-overs of stars that spectacularly exploded in a supernova, the largest explosion that takes place in space.
These pulsars emit rotating beams of electromagnetic radiation, somewhat like cosmic lighthouses.
If their beam sweeps across our solar system, we see flashes of radiation at regular time intervals.
These flashes, also called pulses of radiation, can be searched for in different energy bands of the electromagnetic spectrum.
‘These dead stars are almost entirely made up of neutrons and are incredibly dense,’ said HESS scientist and study author Emma de Oña Wilhelmi.
The Vela Pulsar makes over 11 complete rotations every second, faster than a helicopter rotor. As the pulsar whips around, it spews out a jet of charged particles that race out along the pulsar’s rotation axis at about 70 per cent of the speed of light (artist’s impression)
The observations were made using the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) telescope observatory in Namibia (pictured)
‘A teaspoon of their material has a mass of more than five billion tonnes, or about 900 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza.’
One particular pulsar that’s long been of interest to scientists is the Vela Pulsar, located about 1,000 light years in the Southern sky in the constellation Vela.
Vela Pulsar is only about 12 miles in diameter and makes over 11 complete rotations every second, faster than a helicopter rotor.
As Vela Pulsar whips around, it spews out a jet of charged particles that race out along the pulsar’s rotation axis at about 70 per cent of the speed of light.
Using the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) telescope observatory in Namibia, the scientists studied gamma rays – which have the smallest wavelengths but the most energy of any wave in the electromagnetic spectrum – being emitted from the Vela Pulsar.
The energy of these gamma rays clocked in at 20 tera-electronvolts, or about 10 trillion times the energy of visible light.
This is an order of magnitude larger than in the case of the Crab pulsar, the only other pulsar detected in the teraelectronvolt energy range.
Scientists think that the source of this radiation may be fast electrons produced and accelerated in the pulsar’s magnetosphere – its system of magnetic fields.
Much like planets including Earth, pulsars have a magnetosphere, an invisible forcefield that funnels jets of particles out along the two magnetic poles.
The magnetosphere is made up of plasma and electromagnetic fields that surround and co-rotate with the star.
The energy of these gamma rays clocked in at 20 tera-electronvolts, or about 10 trillion times the energy of visible light (pictured)
Pulsars have a magnetosphere, an invisible forcefield that funnels jets of particles out along the two magnetic poles (pictured)
According to the study authors, the Vela Pulsar now officially holds the record as the pulsar with the highest-energy gamma rays discovered to date, which could revise existing models of astronomy.
‘This discovery is important as we have made a significant progress in probing pulsars at their extreme energy limit,’ Djannati-Atai told MailOnline.
‘Within the zoo of cosmic beasts pulsars are indeed fantastic objects – as neutron stars, they are extremely dense states of matter and have very intense magnetic fields.
‘Probing at their energy limit the phenomena taking place in pulsars and their environment helps us to improve or even to revise our theoretical models of the processes and physical conditions there.
‘It also provides for a better understanding or other very dense and highly magnetised objects which act as cosmic accelerators, e.g. the magnetospheres of blackholes.’
The new study has been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
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