A new study suggests that low-mass microquasars, stellar-mass black holes in our galaxy, can produce high-energy cosmic rays, potentially solving part of the mystery surrounding their origin.
The Earth is bathed in high-energy particles. Known as cosmic rays, most of them are. Fortunately, the atmosphere protects us from any significant harm, though the particles can strike with so much energy that they create a shower of lower energy particles that do reach Earth’s surface. That’s actually how we can detect most cosmic rays.
Not all stellar-mass black holes are microquasars. Regular quasars create jets by capturing material from the galaxy surrounding them, but microquasars need a companion star to pull material from. The amount of energy a microquasar can produce depends on the available material, so microquasars are often categorized by the mass of their companion star. For high-mass microquasars the black hole’s companion is several times the mass of the Sun, providing plenty of material to accelerate.
COSMIC RAYS MICROQUASARS GAMMA RAYS BLACK HOLES SUPERNOVAE
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