(ORDO NEWS) — Astrophysicists have found 14 objects in the Milky Way that emit gamma rays that match what one would expect from stars that are all made of antimatter. Such hypothetical objects are called anti-stars. This is reported by Science Alert.
It is expected that anti-stars will look almost indistinguishable from ordinary stars, however, if they begin to attract interstellar dust, consisting of ordinary matter, then the particles will begin to annihilate, emitting gamma radiation of a certain energy. However, the researchers did not find the signature of the annihilation gamma radiation either in the cosmic microwave background or in the gamma-ray surveys of the Milky Way.
In a new study, astrophysicists analyzed data collected by the Fermi space telescope over a ten-year observation of 5787 gamma-ray sources. The search criteria was a signature corresponding to gamma radiation during the annihilation of a proton and an antiproton, in addition, the source had to be a star. A total of 14 candidate sources have been found, although scientists do not reject the possibility that they could be neutron stars or black holes.
According to the researchers, many anti-stars may be hiding outside the Milky Way, in the galactic halo, where there is little interstellar matter, which means that they do not emit characteristic gamma radiation. It is possible that they can be the sources of the recently revealed signal, which is a sign of the existence of antihelium in space.
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