SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory | 2017 May 02
Galaxy’s Excessive Gamma-Ray Glow Likely Comes from Pulsars, the Remains of Collapsed Ancient Stars
[c][attachment=0]galactic_center_fermi_mellinger_1920[1].jpg[/attachment][/c][hr][/hr]A mysterious gamma-ray glow at the center of the Milky Way is most likely caused by pulsars – the incredibly dense, rapidly spinning cores of collapsed ancient stars that were up to 30 times more massive than the sun. That’s the conclusion of a new analysis by an international team of astrophysicists, including researchers from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The findings cast doubt on previous interpretations of the signal as a potential sign of dark matter – a form of matter that accounts for 85 percent of all matter in the universe but that so far has evaded detection.
“Our study shows that we don’t need dark matter to understand the gamma-ray emissions of our galaxy,” said Mattia Di Mauro from the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), a joint institute of Stanford University and SLAC. “Instead, we have identified a population of pulsars in the region around the galactic center, which sheds new light on the formation history of the Milky Way.” ...
Characterizing the Population of Pulsars in the Galactic Bulge with the Fermi Large Area Telescope - Fermi-LAT Collaboration
- arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1705.00009 > 28 Apr 2017