{"id":481955,"date":"2026-06-17T13:08:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T13:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/481955\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T13:08:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T13:08:17","slug":"nasa-data-reveals-weird-x-ray-changes-in-the-exploded-ruins-of-dead-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/481955\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA data reveals weird x-ray changes in the exploded ruins of dead stars"},"content":{"rendered":"

A set of supernovae<\/a> are behaving in weird ways, more than a decade\u2019s worth of data from NASA\u2019s Chandra X-ray Observatory reveals. Instead of slowly fading, as expected, these exploded stars have dramatically varied in brightness over the course of 14 years.<\/p>\n

Typically, when a massive star explodes<\/a> in a supernova, it leaves behind a cloud of superheated gas and debris. Over time, these stellar fireworks tend to fade, but Chandra<\/a> observations of the galaxy<\/a> Messier 83 (M83) from 2000 through 2014 suggests that\u2019s not always the case. There supernova remnants that researchers had expected to have faded x-ray emissions actually showed surprising variety in the brightness of their x-rays.<\/p>\n

The findings<\/a> were published in the Astrophysical Journal this month.<\/p>\n

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M83<\/a> is around 15 million light-years away from Earth. Also called the Southern Pinwheel, this spiral galaxy is a hotbed of star formation. \u201cWe knew that individual X-ray sources could vary dramatically,\u201d said Andrea Prestwich, an astronomer at the Catholic University of America and the study\u2019s lead author, in a statement<\/a>. \u201cBut finding that so many supernova remnants were behaving this way was a real surprise. Something unusual is going on in these objects. Pinpointing the cause remains a challenge, as M83\u2019s distance limits the detail we can observe.\u201d<\/p>\n

At least one of the odd remnants has an explanation\u2014the debris from SN 1957D, a supernova first seen almost 70 years ago, appears to be colliding with material surrounding it, leading to the increased x-ray emissions. But the cause of the other changing emissions is unclear.<\/p>\n

One possible explanation, the researchers say, is a population of survivor stars that seems to have outlived their partner stars. If this is confirmed, then each x-ray source would have started as a pair of stars orbiting each other. In this scenario, when the more massive star exploded, its partner star did not. That would create what is called a high-mass x-ray binary, or HMXB, which could explain the variation in the Chandra readings. HMXBs aren\u2019t new, but they haven\u2019t historically been linked to very many supernova remnants.<\/p>\n

Another potential cause of the varying x-ray emissions is that a black hole or neutron star, which is sometimes left after a star dies, is pulling in some of the material that was originally expelled outward in a sort of cosmic recycling.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis could be an example of cosmic recycling, where debris from the explosion falls back onto the very object the supernova created,\u201d said study co-author and Wesleyan University astronomy professor Roy Kilgard in the same statement. \u201cAnd it\u2019s quite possible that both explanations are at play\u2014different sources in our sample may have different origins.\u201d<\/p>\n

M83 isn\u2019t the only galaxy where scientists have recently spotted these variable supernova remnants; a follow-up study also revealed them in Messier 51 (M51<\/a>), or the Whirlpool Galaxy.<\/p>\n

\"This<\/p>\n

A composite image of the galaxy M51 combines data from NASA\u2019s Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple) with optical data (red, green and blue) taken with ground-based telescopes by a team of astrophotographers.<\/p>\n

NASA\/CXC\/SAO (Chandra x-ray data); C.Bj\u00f6rk\/T.B\u00e4hnck\/S. Donoso\/J. Gentillon\/A. and D. Grelin\/S. Guberski\/R. Hall\/T. Heuberger\/J. Jacks\/P. Kent\/Br. Meyers\/W. Ostling\/N. Puig\/T. Schaeffer\/F. Sch\u00f6fb\u00e4nker\/M. Vasilev (Astrobin\/optical ground-based data)<\/p>\n

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