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Supernova 'wreckage' blasts out cosmic rays in deep space - Space.com

Supernova 'wreckage' blasts out cosmic rays in deep space - Space.com

Supernova 'wreckage' blasts out cosmic rays in deep space - Space.com
Aug 13, 2022 1 min, 52 secs

Astronomers tracked cosmic rays to objects that launch particles with energy 10 times greater than the Large Hadron Collider.

Astronomers spotted wreckage from a supernova explosion potentially capable of blasting out high-energy particles  —  or cosmic rays  —  that frequently bombard Earth. .

These intriguing cosmic accelerators  — which receive their name from their ability to boost the energies of particles to extreme peta-electronvolt (PeV) levels — have never been conclusively identified. .

The research team says their new find of a supernova explosion's leftovers   —  a cloud of material called G106.3+2.7  —  could be the most promising candidate yet.

Using NASA's Fermi Large Area Telescope, astronomers spotted a high-energy gamma-ray afterglow that implies G106.3+2.7 may be capable of the PeVatron-associated feat of blasting out particles at energies equivalent to a million billion electronvolts  —  10 times as great as energies generated by the Large Hadron Collider, Earth's most powerful particle accelerator.

"Theorists think the highest-energy cosmic ray protons in the Milky Way reach a million billion electron volts or PeV energies," assistant professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Ke Fang said in a NASA statement.

Scientists suspect the supernova wreckage from dead stars accelerates particles to such high energies when charged particles are ensnared by magnetic fields around them.

Finally, the particles are so energetic that the supernova remains cannot hold on to them, and the particles escape into space at near-light-speeds as cosmic rays.

Tracing cosmic rays back to supernova wreckage has been difficult because the protons that comprise cosmic rays are electrically charged.

Because the acceleration of protons to such high speeds causes the emission of gamma-rays, however, this high-energy light could be a good proxy for detecting the source of cosmic rays.

Both Fermi and the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, southern Arizona, detected gamma-rays from inside the tail of the supernova wreckage of G106.3+2.7.

This finding led the researchers to infer that the source of some gamma-rays from G106.3+2.7 was indeed the acceleration of protons to PeV-level energies.

"So far, G106.3+2.7 is unique, but it may turn out to be the brightest member of a new population of supernova remnants that emit gamma rays reaching TeV energies," Fang said.

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