AstronomyThis star might be orbiting a strange 'boson star'

This star might be orbiting a strange ‘boson star’

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by Paul M. Sutter, Universe At present

Illustration of a merger of two boson stars. Credit score: Nicolás Sanchis-Gual and Rocío García Souto

A crew of astronomers has claimed that observations of a sun-like star orbiting a small black hole may really be the indication of one thing much more unique—the existence of a boson star, a star composed totally of dark matter.

The Gaia survey, led by the European House Company, offered detailed maps of greater than a billion stars within the Milky Way galaxy. Whereas nearly all of these stars behaved as anticipated, there have been some surprises. For instance, one star specifically was seen orbiting a darkish companion.

The star itself was pretty typical, weighing in at 0.93 solar masses and with roughly the identical chemical abundance as our personal sun. Nonetheless, its companion didn’t emit any radiation in any respect. Most astronomers suspect that it was a black hole, which may simply clarify the observational end result.

However, in a paper just lately printed on the arXiv preprint server, a crew of astronomers have identified that this specific setup is very uncommon. Black holes kind from the deaths of very huge stars, and it is unlikely for a star like our sun to kind as a part of a binary pair with such an enormous star. The state of affairs requires a lot tremendous tuning, the authors argue, that we must be open to contemplating different potentialities.

Maybe probably the most unique risk is that the darkish companion just isn’t a black hole however a boson star. Boson stars are a consequence of a hypothetical type of dark matter. Darkish matter itself includes over 80% of all of the mass of each galaxy and is product of some type of particle that to date eludes trendy physics. In some theories of dark matter it’s composed of bosons, that are a type of particle like photons and gluons—particles that usually carry the forces of nature. However the dark matter bosons can be totally different, and would as a substitute merely replenish a lot of the universe.

However due to their nature, the boson dark matter particles may simply pile up on themselves forming dense, compact objects. These objects wouldn’t emit any radiation in any respect and would seem to outdoors observers to behave like black holes.

Whereas it is extremely unlikely that this commentary has revealed the existence of a boson star, the thought is value contemplating for 2 causes. One, the star is unquestionably orbiting one thing small, dense, and compact. This affords a pure take a look at mattress for our understanding of gravity as given by Einstein’s basic idea of relativity. Discovering any type of discrepancy between theoretical expectations and observational outcomes can be a landmark discovery.

Second, we will use this as a case study within the nature of boson stars. We will additional examine the properties of those unique and hypothetical objects, and use this state of affairs to check these concepts. Whereas it is unlikely that these assessments will come out in favor of the existence of boson stars, the extra we find out about dark matter, even when it is only a gradual strategy of ruling out attention-grabbing concepts, the higher.

Extra info:
Alexandre M. Pombo et al, A Solar-like star orbiting a boson star, arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2304.09140

Journal info:
arXiv


Offered by
Universe At present

Quotation:
This star is likely to be orbiting an odd ‘boson star’ (2023, Could 15)
retrieved 16 Could 2023
from https://phys.org/information/2023-05-star-orbiting-strange-boson.html

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