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A cosmic 'speed camera' just revealed the staggering speed of neutron star jets in a world first

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2024-03-31 16:30:04

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Simultaneous X-ray and multi-band radio light curves of 4U1728. Credit: Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07133-5

How fast can a neutron star drive powerful jets into space? The answer, it turns out, is about one-third the speed of light, as our team has just revealed in a new study published in Nature.

Energetic cosmic beams known as jets are seen throughout our universe. They are launched when material—mainly dust and gas—falls in towards any dense central object, such as a neutron star (an extremely dense remnant of a once-massive star) or a black hole.

The jets carry away some of the gravitational energy released by the infalling gas, recycling it back into the surroundings on far larger scales.