Astronomers Reveal 'The MOST Terrifying Object In the Universe'

 

in astronomy even though many objects have similar names they can have entirely different meanings probably a quasar blazars magnetos pulsar tomato tomato they're all about the same right wrong

 welcome to fact nominal today we'll explore these four astronomical wonders and realize how while similar a name they couldn't be more different before we start talking about quasars and blazars let's agree on this premise every time you gaze at the stars you don't actually see the way they look now but the way they looked hundreds thousands millions and sometimes even billions of years ago for instance the distance between earth and the center of the milky way is roughly 26 000 light years meaning that light takes 26 000 years to travel from there to us

 so if we are observing the center of the milky way from earth we would see how it looked about 26 000 years ago but now you might be wondering what does that have to do with quasars well let's crank up the distances and imagine looking at something billions of light years away that is 100 times more luminous than our entire milky way that my friend is a quasar short for quasi-stellar radio source a quasar is an active galactic nuclei and are the product of intense friction of the plasma surrounding supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies the friction within the accretion disk of the black hole makes the plasma whirlpool at incredible speeds which in turn makes it extremely hot the plasma is so hot that it glows bright enough to drown out the entirety of the light emissions from the galaxy surrounding the black hole the quasar doesn't just emit light but rather a cocktail of radio waves x-waves and ultraviolet light these quasar jets shoot out to long distances and give rise to a phenomenon known as dragon or double radio source active galactic nucleus this happens because the jets that shoot out of the quasar slam into the intergalactic medium that exists between two galaxies what about blazars then while quasars are content with radiating matter and energy across the universe blazars do the same but choose to aim at specific highly concentrated points like at planet earth

 aren't they such nice guys the power of their gamma rays are enough to make earth devoid of life but luckily only a handful of blazars have been identified and their immense distance away makes them pretty harmless you might be wondering what role they play in the grand scheme of the universe because of the staggering distance of the quasars from earth they are clearly the most ancient objects known to us and they give an insight into the early years of the formation of the universe as the universe was young and stars were frequently forming and collapsing they riddled the universe with supernovae life never had a chance of developing because it was continuously wiped out by cosmic events

 quasars though were also plentiful and radiated energy through the universe heating up the gas that filled it in the primordial stages of the universe hot gas doesn't collapse into stars and so the creation of new stars slowed down and cosmic cataclysms became less frequent giving thus the formation of life a chance

 in a way looking at quasars we are reading the history of the entire universe and furthering our studies we are able to comprehend more about its early stages and its formation confirming theories dismantling others and overall improving our understanding in this big home we live in in which we are but a particle of dust this is certainly a less exotic subject as we aren't looking at the elders of our cosmos but rather at some of the younglings they are two different forms of neutron stars one pulsating energy at its poles and another with an unbelievably powerful magnetic field but let's delve a bit deeper shall we neutron stars are as the name suggests stars made almost entirely of neutrons they come to be the final stop in the life cycle of powerful stars as they collapse under their own gravitational force and generate a supernova if the leftover matter the nucleus of the star is between 1.4 and 3 solar masses gravity pulls it in a tight embrace and results in a state of matter so dense that electrons and protons undergo a process of fusion becoming neutrons now while these stars are roughly a quintillion times denser than water they are also quite tiny their average diameter because of the immense pressure is only roughly 20 kilometers and as a result they spin extremely quickly several times per second as they rotate so quickly the electrons nearing neutron stars get spun along the radius of the magnetic field and thrown into space as an emission of light and radiation this emission is perceived on earth as a pulse a pulse from a star a pulsar that is which is what the majority of neutron stars generally are in 1979 a gamma-ray burst puzzled the scientific community it wasn't until 2008 that we were able to identify the probable culprit a magnetar a magnetar is an exotic type of neutron star whose defining feature is that it has an ultra powerful magnetic field magnetars are by far the most magnetic stars in the universe the strength of the magnetic field around the magnetar completely boggles the imagination the magnetic field of the earth's core is about 25 gauss and here on the surface we experience less than half a gauss a regular bar magnet is about 100 gauss just a regular neutron star has a magnetic field of a trillion gauss just in order to form a magnetar the leftover nucleus of a collapsed neutron star should not be between 1.4 and 3 solar masses but rather between 10 to 25 if the stars somehow doesn't collapse into a black hole a magnetar is born gravity still pulls everything in a tight embrace but this time the magnetic field is much stronger enough to turn anything in a 1 000 kilometer radius into clouds of monatomic ions that is to say atoms without electrons their magnetic field is about 1 000 times stronger than a pulsar's but magnetars rotate quite slowly about once every 2-10 seconds and thus do not give way to pulsating light emissions although some magnetar pulsar hybrids have been observed giving scientists room for thought but that could be a subject for another article

 magnetars are neutron stars themselves but the origin of their magnetic field is unknown

 another theory born out of ai simulations is that it may be generated by the convective flow of exotic matter inside the star through a so-called dynamo effect which is strong enough to amplify the magnetic field of the neutron star 1000 times yet another theory is that pulsars and magnetars might be two faces of the same coin with pulsars turning into magnetars or perhaps the other way around the only certainty is that it's a big mess and that we are confident of knowing how their life evolves their rotation radiation and magnetic field become increasingly weaker until they just stop moving and become dense rocks afloat in the galaxy but if they happen to orbit another younger star and form a binary system they may feed on its more loosely bound atmosphere and give way to another cataclysm turning into a black hole there's also one other option if a rare binary system composed entirely of neutron stars as form they end up merging and sending ripples of gravity waves through space-time as predicted by einstein over 100 years ago and observed in 2017.

 terrifyingly awesome so which one of these phenomena would you like to learn more about and which one do you think is the most beautiful tell us in the comments and as always thanks for reading fact nominal you