Posted on Friday 4 January 2008
This white dwarf in the AE Aquarii system is the first star of its type known to give off pulsar-like pulsations that are powered by its rotation and particle acceleration. AE Aquarii emits pulses of high-energy (hard) X-rays as it whirls around on its axis. The observations from Suzaku, a joint Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NASA X-ray observatory, have challenged scientists’ conventional understanding of white dwarfs. Observers had believed white dwarfs were inert stellar corpses that slowly cool and fade away, but the new data tell a totally different story.
“We’re seeing behavior like the pulsar in the Crab Nebula, but we’re seeing it in a white dwarf,” says Koji Mukai of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “This is the first time such pulsar-like behavior has ever been observed in a white dwarf.”
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Original post by HealthNewsBlog.com
