An international team of astronomers has unraveled new insights about an object at the center of a cosmic mystery a pulsar that appears to constantly change in brightness. Now, the scientists think they know what’s behind it.
A dead star feeding on a stellar companion seems to have two brightness modes. It s because, astronomers discovered, the system launches cosmic cannonballs.
With a remarkable observational campaign that involved 12 telescopes both on the ground and in space, including three European Southern Observatory (ESO) facilities, astronomers have uncovered the strange behaviour of a pulsar, a super-fast-spinning dead star. This mysterious object is known to switch between two brightness modes almost constantly, something that until now has been an enigma. But astronomers have now found that sudden ejections of matter from the pulsar over very short periods are responsible for the peculiar switches.
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