{"id":242782,"date":"2026-08-16T13:04:34","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T18:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/nasas-ixpe-may-have-proven-90-year-old-theory"},"modified":"2026-08-16T13:04:34","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T18:04:34","slug":"nasas-ixpe-may-have-proven-90-year-old-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/nasas-ixpe-may-have-proven-90-year-old-theory","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s IXPE May Have Proven 90-Year-Old Theory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/nasas-ixpe-may-have-proven-90-year-old-theory.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Scientists using NASA\u2019s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) conducted more than 140 hours of observations of the magnetar 1E 1547\u20135408 between March and April 2025 alongside NASA\u2019s NICER (Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer) and Murriyang, CSIRO\u2019s Parkes radio telescope, owned and operated by Australia\u2019s national science agency. This was the first-ever coordinated radio and X-ray polarization measurement of a magnetar.<\/p>\n<p>1E 1547\u20135408, spinning in a full rotation every 2 seconds, is a unique magnetar that consistently emits bright radio energy and X-ray light, for reasons scientists are still trying to understand.<\/p>\n<p>Observations showed the polarization, or the orientation and level of alignment of the incoming photons, is nearly three times greater than seen in similar sources. This high level of polarization was surprising, since the geometry of the magnetar\u2019s magnetic fields suggest that the measurements we see should be close to zero at certain points in the star. Standard surface emission models do not explain this large value either, indicating that another effect must be boosting the polarization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists using NASA\u2019s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) conducted more than 140 hours of observations of the magnetar 1E 1547\u20135408 between March and April 2025 alongside NASA\u2019s NICER (Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer) and Murriyang, CSIRO\u2019s Parkes radio telescope, owned and operated by Australia\u2019s national science agency. This was the first-ever coordinated radio and X-ray [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":579,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242782","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\/579"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242782\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}