NASA has imaged a tiny star unleashing a 'gargantuan' antimatter beam

The star is a pulsar named PSR J2030+4415, and resides approximately 1,600 light-years from Earth.

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The beam ejected from the pulsar extends 40 trillion miles and has been imaged by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The beam was first detected in 2020, but astronomers could not determine its full length as it extended past the bounds of the Chandra detector. The record-breaking beam is the longest spotted from originating from a pulsar.

"It's amazing that a pulsar that's only 10 miles across can create a structure so big that we can see it from thousands of light-years away. With the same relative size, if the filament stretched from New York to Los Angeles the pulsar would be about 100 times smaller than the tiniest object visible to the naked eye," said Martijn de Vries of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who led the study.

Researchers from the Chandra study of this pulsar believe that it and other similar pulsars may be responsible for creating the antimatter detected here on Earth by positron detectors. PSR J2030+4415 rotates three times a second, which, combined with its strong magnetic field, leads to particle acceleration and high-energy radiation, resulting in electron and positron pairs.

X-ray and optical views of the pulsar have been layered to produce the final image shown above. Full-size images of the pulsar and its matter and antimatter beam are available on the Chandra observatory website.

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X-ray & Optical (Wide Field)

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X-ray (Wide Field)

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Optical (Wide Field)

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X-ray & Optical (Inset)

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X-ray (Inset)

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Optical (Inset)

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X-ray (Full Field, Labeled)