Inhabited planets can live near pulsars

Inhabited planets can live near pulsars

A new theory says that inhabited worlds can exist around pulsars. Such planets should have a large-scale atmosphere that protects against dangerous radiation and high-energy particles.

Pulsars are distinguished by extreme conditions. These are neutron stars with a diameter of 10-30 km. Endowed with powerful magnetic fields and regularly release a huge amount of X-rays.

This is the first time that scientists have tried to determine the habitability zone near neutron stars. Calculations show that this territory can reach the Earth-Sun distance. In addition, the world must be a super-Earth, and on the mass surpass our planet by 1-10 times. With smaller sizes, the exoplanet will lose the atmospheric layer over several thousand years. In addition, its density should be a million times thicker than the earth. The researchers looked at the PSR B1257 + 12 pulsar, distant by 2,300 light years. Lives on the territory of the Virgin. For the survey used a telescope Chandra. Three planets rotate around the pulsar, two of which are super-earths (4-5 times more massive than Earth). The planets are close to the pulsar and heat up. Temperature may be suitable for the presence of liquid water.

Astronomers plan to provide a more detailed description of the pulsar and compare it with others. To do this, they decided to connect ALMA. There are about 1 billion neutron stars in the Milky Way, of which 200,000 are pulsars. While we had time to study 3000 pulsars and 5 planets around some. The first exoplanets near pulsars were found in 1992.

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