By Ron Cowen
Some 30,000 light-years from Earth, a tiny gravitational monster is tearing material from a companion star, blasting X-rays into space and sporadically hurling out jets of radio-wave-emitting blobs at close to the speed of light.
Known as Cygnus X-3, this mercurial star system — thought to be either a small black hole or a neutron star orbiting an ordinary partner — has fascinated astronomers for more than four decades with its surprisingly bright X-ray emissions. Now, two teams of researchers have made the first definitive detection of high-energy gamma rays, the most powerful type of electromagnetic radiation, from this small but nearby stellar system.
The findings may provide a new window on how this beast accelerates charged particles to enormous energies, researchers reported in early November at the 2009 Fermi Symposium in Washington, D.C.