4U 0142+61
Encyclopedia : 4 : 4U : 4U0 : 4U 0142+61
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4U 0142+61 is a pulsar approximately 12,700 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia.
In 2006, the Spitzer Space Telescope surveyed the scene around the pulsar and found a surrounding disk made up of debris shot out during the star's death throes. The dusty rubble in this disk might ultimately stick together to form planets.
This is the first time scientists have detected planet-building materials around a star that died in a fiery blast. It was once a large, bright star with a mass between 10 and 20 times that of our sun. The star probably survived for about 10 million years, until it collapsed under its own weight about 100,000 years ago and blasted apart in a supernova explosion.
Some of the debris, or "fallback," from that explosion eventually settled into a disk orbiting the shrunken remains of the star, or pulsar. Spitzer was able to spot the warm glow of the dusty disk with its heat-seeking infrared eyes. The disk orbits at a distance of about 1 million miles and probably contains about 10 Earth-masses of material.
Pulsars are a class of supernova remnants, called neutron stars, which are incredibly dense. They have masses about 1.4 times that of the sun squeezed into bodies only 10 miles wide. One teaspoon of a neutron star would weigh about 2 billion tons. Pulsar 4U 0142+61 is an X-ray pulsar, meaning that it spins and pulses with X-ray radiation.
Any planets around the stars that gave rise to pulsars would have been incinerated when the stars blew up. The pulsar disk discovered by Spitzer might represent the first step in the formation of a new, more exotic type of planetary system, similar to the one found by Wolszczan in 1992.
Pulsar planets would be bathed in intense radiation and would be quite different from those in our solar system. These planets must be among the least hospitable places in the galaxy for the formation of life.
See also
References
- [Scientists crack mystery of planet formation] (April 5, 2006) CNN
- [Spitzer Sees New Planet Disk Around Dead Star] (April 7, 2006) SpaceDaily
See also
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