Mystery particle may explain extreme X-rays shooting from the 'Magnificent 7' stars - Livescience.com

12 in the journal Physical Review Letters, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory physicist Benjamin Safdi and colleagues used supercomputers to model the idea that axions produced inside the stars could convert to X-rays in the magnetic fields outside the stars.

It's too soon to say for sure whether axions exist or whether they're the true culprit for the weird X-rays, Safdi said, but researchers hope the new computer modeling may point to something outside the Standard Model of physics, which describes known subatomic particles. .

Neutron stars are the leftovers from giant stars that have exhausted their fuel and collapsed; one type of neutron star, called a pulsar, gives off emissions across the electromagnetic spectrum, including high-energy X-rays.

Scientists have also searched behind the neutron star cluster for other objects that could be emitting the mysterious X-rays, but neither the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton telescope nor NASA's Chandra X-ray telescope has turned up anything that could be the culprit. .

But could axions really be produced inside a neutron star.

"You have to model the interior of a neutron star in order to predict how many axions should be produced inside of that star." .

Neutrinos are produced inside neutron stars when neutrons bump into one another; axions could be produced in the same way. .

Given their low mass and weak interactions with other matter, axions could easily escape the cores of neutron stars and zip out into space.

In the presence of these fields, axions would convert into photons, or light particles

The next step, Safdi said, is to look for axions in white dwarfs, another set of stars that shouldn't emit X-rays.