Despite technological advances, theuniverse still has many, many mysteries to reveal. Scientists continue to make new discoveries, hypotheses, and theories that can help us better understand how the cosmos formed, how it evolved, and what the cosmos will look like over the next billions of years. The latest news includes the‘analysis of one star (Call HD45166), which could become one in the future magnetar.
This type of celestial objects is particularly exotic and interesting. It’s about dead stars that have become neutron stars (and therefore with high densities) with magnetic fields very strong. Hence the name, which is a contraction of the words magnetic And star. Its formation is still a mystery, but researchers think they’ve found a star that could evolve into one magnetar in the future and its study could provide useful information. We know this.
The star that could become a magnetar in the future
The scientific article covering the discovery has a title “a massive helium star with a strong enough magnetic field to form a magnetar” and has as its subject Star HD 45166. In itself, this celestial object is nothing new to scientists, since it has been known for about a hundred years and is part of a binary star system that contains one of the two components, which is particularly rich in helium and is about twice as massive as the Sun, which is about 3,000 Light-years from Earth in the constellation of the Unicorn.
Julia Bodensteiner (researcher and one of the authors of the study) said: “Tomer and I refer to HD 45166 as the “Zombie Star”.. That’s not only because this star is so unique, but also because I jokingly said it turns Tomer into a zombie“. To understand the statement, you have to consider that Tom Shenar (leader of the study) said he was “obsessed” of such celestial objects.
The data was collected in early 2022 using various instruments such as the Canada France Hawaii Telescope in addition to the archive data of the FEROS spectrograph The company is located in La Silla, Chile and is owned by ESO. Together with other researchers, it turned out that it was one of the stars of the binary star system HD45166 could own one very strong magnetic fieldsuggesting that it will indeed become one in the future magnetar.
According to the data, the star has a magnetic field of 43 kilogauss (about 100,000 times stronger than Earth’s), making it the massive star with the strongest magnetic field yet discovered. If indeed HD45166 will become one magnetar be in the future magnetic field it will grow a billion times. First, the star explodes in a type Ib or IIb supernova and its core collapses.
The history of the binary system is even more complex than previously thought. In fact, the main star has a lower mass than previously thought, while the companion star has a larger orbit than expected. It has been speculated that the main star formed from the merger of two smaller stars rich in helium.
