Matter Observed Traveling at Almost Precisely the Speed of Light

Cygnus X-3

Located 37, 000 light years away in the constellation Cygnus, which straddles the galactic plane, is a powerful x-ray source named Cygnus X-3. Although it is only the third brightest x-ray source in the constellation after the famous Cygnus X-1, it is much further away on the far side of the galaxy and is obscured by intervening interstellar gas and dust near the galactic plane. When this is factored in, it appears to be one of the two or three most luminous objects in the galaxy in intrinsic brightness. It has received attention because it is one of the few sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays with energies in the 100 - 1000 TeV range. But its most unique aspect is the production of anomalous cosmic ray events in a proton decay detector deep in Minnesota's Soudran iron mine. These events have defied analysis and have led to questions about whether Cygnus X-3 is a standard neutron star or perhaps something more exotic, like a star made of quarks. Cygnus X-3 is a compact object in a binary system which is pulling in a stream of gas from an ordinary star companion.

Cygnus X-3 has distinguished itself by its intense X-ray emissions and by ultrahigh energy cosmic rays. It also made astronomical headlines by a radio frequency outburst in September 1972 which increased its radio frequency emissions a thousandfold. Since then it has had periodic radio outbursts with a regular period of 367 days. These flares are of unknown origin, but they are exceedingly violent events. Naval Research Laboratory observations in October 1982 using the Very Large Array detected the shock wave from a flare; it was expanding at roughly one-third the speed of light.

Cygnus X-3 has an orbital period about its companion of only 4.79 hours. Intriquing underground events in the Soudron iron mines in October 1985 included 60 anomalous muon events in a 3¡ cone around Cygnus X-3 with a precise period of 4.79 hours, so they clearly came from that source. But that requires a neutral particle traveling at almost precisely the speed of light, and there are no reasonable candidates for such a particle .

hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu...

Any thoughts?

Sounds interesting - too bad I can't understand it.
I get your post title. Let's see if you can travel at the speed of light, you can also time travel, right?

reply to post by Kashai


So if it was traveling at the speed of light then shouldn't the radio waves or whatever be detectable sooner (much sooner) than what we are accustomed to. And if so, the doesn't it stand to reason that whatever math we are using to determine it's distance would be off? Is it still measured by Red Shift? Interesting nonetheless!

It means the object is moving neutrons ( a type of matter) so close to the speed of light, it is possible they are actually moving at the speed of light

Such a determination would violate Einsteins theory. But further, we know of no particle or process that would accelerate a particle to speeds like that in nature.

Any thought?

Got to love it when new questions pop up. They are the driving force of science.

I wish they would tell us in the article why it couldn't be a neutron or other known neutral particle though. Maybe the scientists think a neutron would be too massive and would require more energy than they think is possible from the neutron star to get it moving that fast?

Anyways, I wish I had the math to understand how the matter in neutron stars and their more massive cousins, pulsars and magnetars, cause the effects we observe in them. Those objects are insanely interesting.

As for if it is defying Einstein or not, what I took away from the article was that the particle was travelling really, really, really close to the speed of light. My understanding is that you can go .9999999(with infinite nines)c without violating Einstein. It's just that every additional 9 would take an increasingly insane amount of energy to achieve.

reply to post by masta12d


No! Because even if I al travelling at the speed of light, and I shine a flashlight at you the light will still be travelling at exactly the speed of light, otherwise, my traveling at 1 MPH and shinning a flashlight would make the light travel at C+1MPH.

Time dilation occurs to insure the spped of light is not broken, as proved through Einsteins special relativity equations.

Hard to figure how regular matter got accelerated to C ( C is the letter asigned to represent the speed of light) as that is suppossed to be impossible, as it would aquire infinite mass first, thus it would take infinite energy to accelerate it to C.

OP very interesting find, SnF.

reply to post by Mkoll


An instructor of mine once suggested that Quark Stars are Naked Singularities. I favor the conclusion that the process, actually results in standard Neutrons traveling that fast.

Any thoughts?

reply to post by Kashai


A single neutron travelling at that close to the speed of light would have as much mass as the super massive blackhole at the galaxies center.

This has to be an error, like the neutrinos travelling faster than C back during the spring at CERN.

Otherwise, it is time to start rethinking everything we thought we knew, and Einstein isn't aroound anymore to hold our hands and talk us through it.

Even string theory doesn't come close to being able to explaining this, not even if you add all the theoretical dimensions full of energy together.

This is old but interesting.
Back in the early 90's there was a proton recorded coming from the same source. going almost to the speed of light. They called it the Oh my god particle. haha

Check your facts OP. It was not recorded going the speed of light at any later point.
It fits all models of high energy cosmic rays from black hole accretion disks.

Inverselyproportional brings up a very good point. I feel silly for forgetting about the increase in mass that goes along with relativistic speeds

This is definitely interesting! Thanks for bringing this to our attention!

I would like to bring to your attention that you made a thread right after Predator....and you both share the same avatar.

...and you both ended your OP in the same way...

Any thoughts?

How do they know exactly that they are receiving the particles from that star,, and not from any of the other billion sources of projected particles?

reply to post by Kashai


Kyp Thorn and Steven Hawking discussed the naked singularity theory after it was disproved, Kyp mentions it in his book "worm holes and time warps".

Although that was before it was commonly accepted that quark stars could even exist. As I understand it, a quark star is the last few moments right before it would become the infamous black hole, or a star right at the edge of mass for it to collapse.

This is of course still only theoretical as it has never been observed, but it makes perfect sense.

I don't know, as even supermassive blackholes lack "infinite energy" to accelerated an object that fast, a tiny by comparison quark star surely wouldn't.

Though the universe is an amazing place, nothing much really shocks me any more, not since the super massive blackholes were discovered.

Originally posted by inverslyproportional
reply to post by Kashai

 

Though the universe is an amazing place, nothing much really shocks me any more, not since the super massive blackholes were discovered.

what do you think would be at the center of spiral galaxies?

Originally posted by ImaFungi

How do they know exactly that they are receiving the particles from that star,, and not from any of the other billion sources of projected particles?

Because the orbital period of the neutron star in question and the period between the events are very close to the exact same.

Or it could be a fluke which would explain the insanity required to explain the velocity

reply to post by ImaFungi

That is a good point, as it might just have been a spontaneous appearance of of super powered proportions.

Pretty much any explanation makes as much sense as another at this point. Considering the particle shouldn't even exist at all, unless it is a new undiscovered particle that gained speed as it decayed, of several decay cycles of aquiring speed each time....oh hell that still wouldn't even me close to enough.

I am clueless as to what it could be, this is pretty amazing, I have never heard or read of any situation that allows this to happen.

I am just thinking on the keyboard trying to come to a rational thought about this.

Everything points to an error in detection, as far as I can see.

reply to post by inverslyproportional


Implied in the term Naked Singularity is that at the heart of every black hole is a quark star.

ImaFungi...

How do they know exactly that they are receiving the particles from that star,, and not from any of the other billion sources of projected particles?

Cygnus X-3 has an orbital period about its companion of only 4.79 hours. Intriquing underground events in the Soudron iron mines in October 1985 included 60 anomalous muon events in a 3¡ cone around Cygnus X-3 with a precise period of 4.79 hours, so they clearly came from that source.

Any thoughts?

Originally posted by Mkoll

Originally posted by ImaFungi

How do they know exactly that they are receiving the particles from that star,, and not from any of the other billion sources of projected particles?

Because the orbital period of the neutron star in question and the period between the events are very close to the exact same.

Or it could be a fluke which would explain the insanity required to explain the velocity

edit on 14-10-2012 by Mkoll because: (no reason given)

wouldnt there be a lot of stars in the path of view from our location to the center of the milky way? arent all these stars orbiting the center as well? I think i understand what your saying,, your saying we can tell its from the star closest because we can measure and model distance by groupings of somekind,, and so we know it is coming from that exact star because there is group of stars which we can some how tell their particles traveled a certain distance from where it was to us,,., i lost myself...,.,but yea,, im guessing it has to do with redshift

Originally posted by Kashai
reply to post by inverslyproportional

 

Implied in the term Naked Singularity is that at the heart of every black hole is a quark star.

ImaFungi...

How do they know exactly that they are receiving the particles from that star,, and not from any of the other billion sources of projected particles?

Cygnus X-3 has an orbital period about its companion of only 4.79 hours. Intriquing underground events in the Soudron iron mines in October 1985 included 60 anomalous muon events in a 3¡ cone around Cygnus X-3 with a precise period of 4.79 hours, so they clearly came from that source.

Any thoughts?

i dont think anything was clear in 1985.... I will chalk it up to being an error by the humans and their equipment before an error of the universe....,

i still have no idea how they know the subatomic particles they retrieved are from a star millions of light years away,,, because they pointed their antenna at it,, and in 5 hours they detected particles? ok,, seems legit,,

reply to post by ImaFungi


Actually this is consistent with what could be verified technologically by Astrophysics in 1985 .

For the record Cygnus X3 is 37,000 light years from Earth

Any thoughts?