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There’s a tiny star spraying antimatter all over the Milky Way — should we be worried?


Scientists at NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory recently uncovered a twinkling little star that might hold the key to several of the universe’s deepest mysteries. Called a pulsar for its twinkle, the star’s scant the size of a large city. What makes it special is, as NASA describes it, the fact that it’s apparently spewing a “gargantuan stream of matter and antimatter” into our galaxy. Annihilation Here’s where we run into problems. Matter and antimatter don’t get along. When, for example, a quark or a particle collides with their respective antiquark or antiparticle, a process called annihilation occurs. As Big Think’s…

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