Скачать или смотреть Sleeping Neutron Star Roars Back to Life: A Light-Year Jump in Supercritical Accretion?

Astrophysicists watched a neutron star in NGC 7793 P13 wake from a long faint phase and roar into brightness again, revealing a surprising link between X-ray luminosity and the star’s spin-up. Using archival data from XMM-Newton, Chandra, NuSTAR, and NICER (2011–2024), the team tracked how luminosity surged by over 100x while the neutron star’s rotation rate accelerated more than twofold. They also found the height of the accretion column likely changes in tandem with a decade-long flux modulation, offering new clues about supercritical accretion. If you’re curious about how gas falling onto compact objects powers ultra-bright X-rays, what a changing accretion column means, and why this matters for understanding extreme gravity, this video breaks down the key findings in plain language with visuals and simple analogies.