Crab Nebula’s powerful beams ‘jaw dropping’
OCT 07, 2011
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.025629
MSNBC : High-energy gamma-ray flares, with energies in excess of 100 million electron-volts, have been observed coming from the Crab Nebula since 2007. Now gamma-ray flares exceeding 100 billion electron-volts—stronger than anyone had thought possible—have been observed, and they’re coming from the pulsar that spins at the nebula’s heart. Nepomuk Otte, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and colleagues conducted a study of the Crab’s gamma-ray flares using the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) at the Smithsonian’s Whipple Observatory in Arizona. The discovery could change scientific understanding of the process of gamma-ray emission.
© 2011 American Institute of Physics
