Deep in the hot core, the red giant Betelgeuse can produce tons of dark matter particles called axions.
Shaped like a bright red dot in the constellation Orion, Betelgeuse is a star that attracts a lot of researchers’ attention. It is only 520 light years from Earth and gained attention last year as it began to unravel its mystery, leading researchers to believe it might be on the verge of it. to explode like a supernova.
Due to being a large hot star, Betelgeuse may be the perfect place to search for axions. These guesswork particles have masses of only a millionth or even a billionth of that of electrons and are ideal candidates for dark matter, the most massive mysterious matter in the universe.
As dark matter, the axion does not interact much with light particles, but according to some theories it is possible for photon light particles to turn into axions when strong magnetic fields exist, according to Mengjiao Xiao, a physicist. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. The nuclear thermal core of a star is the ideal place to search for both photons and magnetic fields. Betelgeuse with a mass 20 times greater than the Sun, could be an “axionic plant”.
If axions are produced in this extreme environment, they can escape and drift back to Earth in large quantities. Through interaction with the natural magnetic field of the Milky Way galaxy, axions can be converted into photons in the x-ray band of the electromagnetic spectrum. As an older star, Betelgeuse is at a stage in the life cycle where it doesn’t emit a lot of x-rays, so any radiation detected there could reveal the existence of axions.
Xiao and his colleagues used NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Network (NuSTAR) to search for x-ray signals from Betelgeuse. However, they found only small amounts of x-rays from conventional astrophysical processes. Xiao announced the research results at an American Physical Association meeting on April 20. According to them, photons and axions are 3 times less likely to interact than previously thought.
Because stellar environments are noisier than laboratory conditions, studies like these are difficult to conduct, says Joshua Foster, a physicist at MIT, who was not involved in the study. But the team tried to determine the characteristics of the axion.
Even if researchers detect x-rays from a star, that doesn’t necessarily indicate that the axion is real. But the axion could help astronomers better understand Betelgeuse. If the properties of the particle are known, Betelgeuse observing telescopes can pick up their signals, helping to determine the processes that occur in the star’s core and calculate when it explodes.
