It is still a subject of debate whether magnetars and other neutron stars have atmospheres. “This is a phenomenon known as magnetic condensation,” said chairman of the IXPE’s magnetar topical working group, Roberto Turolla, with the University of Padova and University College London.
“Based on current theories for the magnetars, we expected to detect polarization, but no one predicted polarization would depend on energy, as we are seeing in this magnetar,” said Martin Weisskopf, a NASA emeritus scientist who led the IXPE team from the mission’s inception until spring 2022.Īdditionally, the polarization at low energies indicates that the magnetic field is so unimaginably powerful that it could have turned the atmosphere around the neutron star into a solid or a liquid. “Based on current theories for the magnetars, we expected to detect polarization, but no one predicted polarization would depend on energy, as we are seeing in this magnetar,” said Martin Weisskopf, a NASA emeritus scientist who led the IXPE team from the mission’s inception until spring 2022. Scientists were surprised to learn energy levels can affect polarization. “We found that the angle of polarization swings by exactly 90 degrees, following what theoretical models would predict if the star had a solid crust surrounded by an external magnetosphere filled with electric currents,” said Roberto Taverna of the University of Padova, lead author of the new study in the journal Science. When its electric fields vibrate in a single, unified direction, we say the light is polarized.Īstronomers also found that polarization angle depends on the energy of particles of light, with high-energy light at a polarization angle of 90 degrees compared to low-energy light. These fields oscillate or vibrate, at right angles relative to the light’s path of travel. Polarization is a property of light that tells us about the interconnected electric and magnetic fields that make up all wavelengths of light. This is the first time that scientists have been able to reliably conclude that a neutron star has a bare solid crust, a finding enabled by IXPE’s X-ray polarization measurements. This is the first-ever observation of X-ray polarization from a magnetar, a neutron star with the most powerful magnetic fields in the universe.Īstronomers found that the neutron star likely has a solid surface and no atmosphere.
Scientists used IXPE to observe the magnetar 4U 0142+61, a neutron star located in the Cassiopeia constellation, about 13,000 light-years away from Earth.
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