Gamma-Radiation tagged posts

This image shows the installation of the mini-eTPC demonstrator detector during on-line test beams at the 9 MV Tandem accelerator facility at IFIN-HH, Magurele, Romania. From left: Jan Stefan Bihalowicz, Lukasz Janiak, Marcin Zaremba. Credit: Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw

The most intense source of gamma radiation constructed to date will soon become operational at the ELI Nuclear Physics research facility. It will be possible to study reactions that reveal the details of many processes occurring within stars, in particular those leading to the formation of oxygen.

All oxygen was ultimately formed through thermonuclear reactions deep inside stars. Lab studies of astrophysical processes leading to oxygen formation are extremely important...

This is an artist’s impression of the clash of powerful stellar winds. Credit: NASA/C. Reed

The new source confirmed that binary systems with strong colliding stellar winds comprise a separate new population of high-energy gamma-ray sources. Massive binary star systems with highly luminous and hot Wolf-Rayet stars and massive (tens solar masses) OB companion generate strong stellar winds. Its percussion may lead to producing a fierce photon flux with an energetic potential of >100 MEV, when a distance separating stars is relatively short. That phenomenon was considered a possible source of gamma-radiation for a long while.

Though such radiation was detected only once, with the famous Eta Carinae when one of its stars underwebt an explosion and for some time was the most luminous star in th...