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    Nearby Pulsar’s Gamma-Ray ‘Halo’ linked to Antimatter Puzzle

    December 21, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    a photon "squiggle" collides with an electron "dot"; there's a flash and the photon (now a higher-energy gamma ray) shoots away
    Particles traveling near light speed can interact with starlight and boost it to gamma-ray energies. This animation shows the process, known as inverse Compton scattering. When light ranging from microwave to ultraviolet wavelengths collides with a fast-moving particle, the interaction boosts it to gamma rays, the most energetic form of light.
    Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

    NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered a faint but sprawling glow of high-energy light around a nearby pulsar. If visible to the human eye, this gamma-ray “halo” would appear about 40 times bigger in the sky than a full Moon. This structure may provide the solution to a long-standing mystery about the amount of antimatter in our neighborhood.

    “Our analysis suggests that this same puls...

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