Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Bill Steigerwald
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
(Phone: 301/286-5017)
RELEASE: 01-111
In the fiery machinery of the night sky, where neutron stars and black
holes wrapped in binary systems can flare and burst randomly,
astronomers have uncovered a predictable mathematical pattern in the X-
ray light emitted over time.
Drs. Patricia Boyd and Alan Smale of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
in Greenbelt, MD, have followed the history of X-ray emission from three
binary star systems over the last several years and uncovered a unifying
concept: The number of days between the low points of emission in each
binary system is random yet always based on multiples of a single
constant number.
Black holes and neutron stars often reside in binary star systems,
sharing an orbit with a healthy, hydrogen-burning star. Sometimes, when
the orbits bring the two companions close together or when the healthy
star flares, gravity pulls gas from the healthy star toward the black
hole or the neutron star. The journey, arduous enough for the gas to
glow hot in X-ray radiation, follows a path called an accretion disk.
Because a black hole is invisible and a neutron star is so tiny (only
10-20 kilometers across), astronomers best learn about these objects
from the dynamics of the very visible accretion disk.
Boyd and Smale have uncovered a new tool to probe the physics of the
accretion disk, one that combines the predictability of geometry and the
randomness of disk disturbances. Their subjects are two probable black
holes, Cygnus X-3 and LMC X-3, and one neutron star, Cygnus X-2.
Cygnus X-2 has an orbital period, or length, of 9.8 days. Boyd and Smale
found that the time between minimum X-ray brightness is always a whole-
number multiple of 9.8 -- for example 77.7 days, 58.8 days or 49 days,
which are 8, 6 and 5 times 9.8. One cannot predict what multiple will
come next; this is random. The orbital period and the presence of whole-
number multiples, though, are constant.
Long-term variations in LMC X-3 and Cygnus X-3 follow the same general
rule: The lengths of the variations are always a whole number multiplied
by a constant. Finding similar behavior in such different systems
implies that the mechanism for disk disturbances must be tied to
something as predictable as a clock.
Boyd and Smale work within Goddard's Laboratory for High Energy
Astrophysics through their appointments by the University of Maryland,
Baltimore County, and the Universities Space Research Association,
respectively. The ASM was built by the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge.
http://rxte.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/xhp_new.html
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