NASA望遠(yuǎn)鏡探測(cè)創(chuàng)紀(jì)錄的太空爆炸

NASA望遠(yuǎn)鏡探測(cè)創(chuàng)紀(jì)錄的太空爆炸

We’ve got it pretty good here on our little blue orb orbiting a relatively chilled-out star, but space is dark and full of terrors. In a new paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, scientists using data from NASA’s NICER telescope reveal the discovery of an absolutely massive energy burst spotted some 11,000 light-years away from Earth.

我們?cè)趪@著一顆相對(duì)靜止的恒星運(yùn)行的藍(lán)色小星球上已經(jīng)拍得很好了，但是太空是黑暗的，充滿(mǎn)了恐怖。在《天體物理學(xué)雜志》上發(fā)表的一篇新論文中，科學(xué)家們利用美國(guó)國(guó)家航空航天局(NASA)的一架更好的望遠(yuǎn)鏡獲得的數(shù)據(jù)，發(fā)現(xiàn)了一場(chǎng)距離地球約11000光年的巨大能量爆發(fā)。

NICER, which is a high-tech sensor installed on the International Space Station, detected the incredible release of energy coming from a system known as SAX J1808. Unlike our own solar system, J1808 is a binary system, meaning that its heart is made up of two objects rather than one.

這是一個(gè)安裝在國(guó)際空間站上的高科技傳感器，它探測(cè)到一個(gè)名為SAX J1808的系統(tǒng)釋放出令人難以置信的能量。與我們的太陽(yáng)系不同，J1808是一個(gè)雙星系統(tǒng)，這意味著它的核心是由兩個(gè)物體組成的，而不是一個(gè)。

In the case of J1808, the primary object is a neutron star. Its companion is a brown dwarf, which is cooler than a star but larger than a planet. The neutron star, also known as a pulsar, gathers gas from the brown dwarf and every so often this relationship results in a truly apocalyptic explosion.

在J1808的例子中，主要的目標(biāo)是一顆中子星。它的伴星是一顆褐矮星，比恒星要冷，但比行星要大。中子星，也被稱(chēng)為脈沖星，從褐矮星中收集氣體，這種關(guān)系經(jīng)常導(dǎo)致一場(chǎng)真正的世界末日式的爆炸。

The blast itself lasts just seconds, but the amount of energy released when the outermost layers of the pulsar detonate is mind-boggling. As NASA explains in a new blog post, it would take 10 full days for our sun to release the same amount of energy as the pulsar beams into space in just 20 seconds.

爆炸本身只持續(xù)幾秒鐘，但當(dāng)脈沖星最外層爆炸時(shí)釋放的能量是令人難以置信的。美國(guó)國(guó)家航空航天局在一篇新的博客文章中解釋說(shuō)，我們的太陽(yáng)需要整整10天才能釋放出與脈沖星光束相同的能量，只需20秒。

“This burst was outstanding,” said lead researcher Peter Bult, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and the University of Maryland, College Park. “We see a two-step change in brightness, which we think is caused by the ejection of separate layers from the pulsar surface and other features that will help us decode the physics of these powerful events.”

“這次爆炸非常出色，”首席研究員Peter Bult說(shuō)，他是位于馬里蘭州綠帶的NASA戈達(dá)德太空飛行中心和馬里蘭大學(xué)學(xué)院公園分校的天體物理學(xué)家。“我們看到亮度有兩步的變化，我們認(rèn)為這是由脈沖星表面的獨(dú)立層和其他特征的噴射造成的，這些特征將幫助我們破譯這些強(qiáng)大事件的物理機(jī)制。”

It was the largest X-ray burst ever detected by the NICER observatory and it was spotted way back in August. Analyzing and interpreting the data takes time, of course and the full paper describing the discovery was just recently published.

這是由更好的天文臺(tái)探測(cè)到的最大的x射線(xiàn)爆炸，早在8月就被發(fā)現(xiàn)了。當(dāng)然，分析和解釋這些數(shù)據(jù)需要時(shí)間，描述這一發(fā)現(xiàn)的完整論文剛剛發(fā)表。