{"id":181244,"date":"2024-01-24T02:28:38","date_gmt":"2024-01-24T08:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/particle-accelerators-in-the-sky-nasas-ixpe-explores-microquasar-mechanics"},"modified":"2024-01-24T02:28:38","modified_gmt":"2024-01-24T08:28:38","slug":"particle-accelerators-in-the-sky-nasas-ixpe-explores-microquasar-mechanics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/particle-accelerators-in-the-sky-nasas-ixpe-explores-microquasar-mechanics","title":{"rendered":"Particle Accelerators in the Sky: NASA\u2019s IXPE Explores \u201cMicroquasar\u201d Mechanics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/particle-accelerators-in-the-sky-nasas-ixpe-explores-microquasar-mechanics2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Insights from NASA \u2019s IXPE mission have transformed our understanding of particle acceleration in black holes, using the microquasar SS 433 as a case study to reveal aligned magnetic fields within its jets.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The powerful gravity fields of black holes can devour whole planets\u2019 worth of matter \u2013 often so violently that they expel streams of particles traveling near the speed of light in formations known as jets. Scientists understand that these high-speed jets can accelerate these particles, called cosmic rays, but little is definitively known about that process.<\/p>\n<p>Recent findings by researchers using data from <a href=\"https:\/\/scitechdaily.com\/tag\/ixpe\/\">NASA\u2019s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer)<\/a> spacecraft give scientists new clues as to how particle acceleration happens in this extreme environment. The observations came from a \u201cmicroquasar,\u201d a system comprised of a black hole siphoning off material from a companion star.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Insights from NASA \u2019s IXPE mission have transformed our understanding of particle acceleration in black holes, using the microquasar SS 433 as a case study to reveal aligned magnetic fields within its jets. The powerful gravity fields of black holes can devour whole planets\u2019 worth of matter \u2013 often so violently that they expel streams [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}