{"id":18610,"date":"2023-12-26T12:22:07","date_gmt":"2023-12-26T06:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=18610"},"modified":"2025-04-05T11:59:29","modified_gmt":"2025-04-05T06:29:29","slug":"x-ray-bursts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/x-ray-bursts\/","title":{"rendered":"What are X-ray bursts?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>About X-ray bursts<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>It occurs in low-mass X-ray binary systems where a\u00a0neutron star and\u00a0low-mass main sequence star are in orbit around one another.<\/li>\n<li>Due to their close proximity and the extreme gravity of the neutron star, the companion star overflows its roche-lobe and\u00a0hydrogen is drawn into an accretion disk\u00a0around the neutron star.<\/li>\n<li>This hydrogen is eventually deposited on the surface of the neutron star and immediately is converted into helium due to the extreme temperatures and pressures that exist there.<\/li>\n<li>A thin surface layer of helium is built up, and once a critical mass of helium is reached, it ignites explosively, heating the entire surface of the neutron star to several tens of millions of degrees releasing a sudden burst of X-rays.<\/li>\n<li>Once the outburst is over, the binary system temporarily returns to its quiescent state while the neutron star begins to re-accumulate the helium surface layer.<\/li>\n<li>The process repeats resulting in recurrent X-ray bursts.<\/li>\n<li>It generally occurs at regular intervals separated by several hours or days.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What is a magnetar?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>It is an\u00a0exotic type of neutron star, its defining feature that it has an ultra-powerful magnetic field.<\/li>\n<li>The field is about 1,000 times stronger than a normal neutron star and about a trillion times stronger than the Earth\u2019s.<\/li>\n<li>Apart from ultra-powerful magnetic fields, magnetars also\u00a0release vast amounts of energy\u00a0in the form of flares, X-rays, and gamma-ray bursts.<\/li>\n<li>They are therefore associated with extreme events in the universe, making them perhaps the most bizarre objects in the cosmos next to black holes.<\/li>\n<li>The magnetic field of a magnetar may be caused by a neutron star\u2019s interior \u2013 thought to be made up of neutrons, quarks and exotic states of matter such as Bose-Einstein Condensates \u2013 becoming a superconducting fluid.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1) What is Helium (He)?<\/h3>\n<p>It is a chemical element, inert gas of Group 18 (noble gases) of the periodic table. The second lightest element (only hydrogen is lighter), helium is a colourless, odourless, and tasteless gas that becomes liquid at \u2212268.9 \u00b0C (\u2212452 \u00b0F). The boiling and freezing points of helium are lower than those of any other known substance.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/pib.gov.in\/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1990198\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>Milli-second burst detected by AstroSat in new high magnetic field neutron star can help understand such stellar entities<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>X-ray bursts occurs in low-mass X-ray binary systems where a neutron star and low-mass main sequence star are in orbit around one another.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":18611,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18610","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}