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The search for hypothetical axons flowing from Betelgeuse appears to be blank, but it helps physicists to set limits on their properties.
Deep within its scorching hot core, the red giant star "Betelgeuse" can produce tons of hypothetical dark matter particles called axons which, if present, would emit an alarm signal. Recent research on such a puzzling emission helped physicists set new limits on the axon's supposed properties.
Betelgeon appears as a bright red dot in the constellation Orion, and is a well-studied star. Cosmically close, it is only 520 light-years from Earth, and made headlines last year when it began to mysteriously darken, leading some researchers to believe that it might be preparing to explode as a supernova.
Scientists say that since it is a very hot and large star, it may also be an ideal place to find axons. These specific particles can contain a million or even a billionth of the mass of an electron, and are ideal candidates for the formation of dark matter, the mysterious substance that greatly outnumbers ordinary matter in the universe but whose nature is still largely undetermined.
Because they are dark matter, axons should not interact much with luminous particles, but according to some theories, there is a small possibility that photons, or light particles, can be turned back and forth into axes in the presence of a strong magnetic field, according to Mengjiao Xiao, a physicist. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, for Live Science.
The thermonuclear core of the star is a good place to find abundant quantities of photons and magnetism, and "Betelgeuse", which has a mass of 20 times the mass of the sun, can be envisioned as "what we call the Axion factory."
And if the axons are produced in this harsh environment, they must be able to escape to the outside so that the current is directed towards the earth in large numbers. By interacting with the Milky Way's natural magnetic field, these axes can be converted back into photons in the X-ray portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, Xiao said.
The "Prospector of Gemini" is in the stage of life where it should not emit much X-ray light, so any radiation detected from it may indicate the presence of the interlocutor.
And Xiao and his colleagues used the Array of NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopy Telescope (Nostar) to search for an X-ray fingerprint from "Betelgeuse", even though they saw nothing beyond what was expected from normal astrophysical processes such as a small amount of X-rays.
The results, which Xiao presented on April 20 at the American Physical Society meeting, indicate that photons and axes are at least three times less likely than previously thought.
And even if researchers saw unexpected x-rays coming from a star, that wouldn't necessarily indicate that the axes are real. Scientists have yet to rule out many non-dark matter explanations for the signal before switching to new physics.
Xiao said the axons, if they were found someday, could help astronomers better understand Gemini's socket. If the properties of the particles are known, he added, telescopes trained on the "Orbit of Gemini" may finally be able to capture their signals, give insight into the processes at their core, and enable researchers to calculate when it will actually explode.
Source: Live Science
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