This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: In 2016, a binary star system emitting unusually strong gamma rays was discovered in our galactic neighborhood. Now, astronomers have found the smoking gun, or rather, a smoking trail of cool molecular gas that suggests jets emanating from a microquasar—one of the few known outside the Milky Way—are responsible.
Unlike the Milky Way, which shrouds objects behind dust when looking toward the galactic core, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a dwarf satellite galaxy to our own, offers unhindered views of interesting and relatively nearby astrophysical phenomena. LMC P3 is one such stellar puzzle. It is the most luminous gamma-ray binary star system, composed of a compact object—either a black hole or a neutron star—alongside a massive star that is more than 30 times heavier than the sun.
The two stars take roughly 10 days to orbit each other. It lies within the ashes left behind by the supernova that created its compact object. This optically attractive cloud of molecular gas, also known as a supernova remnant, is called DEM L241.
Ever since its discovery, unusually strong gamma-ray emission from LMC P3 has puzzled astronomers. Gamma rays lie at the highest energy limit of the electromagnetic spectrum. But an important clue to LMC P3's mystery was hidden at the other end of the spectrum: radio waves.
Starting in 2022, a team led by astronomers from Nagoya University and Gifu University in Japan recorded observations of DEM L241/LMC P3 using the ALMA observatory in Chile, one of the largest radio telescopes in the world. Specifically, they used ALMA bands 6 and 7 to measure carbon monoxide (CO) emission from the surrounding cold molecular gas, at wavelengths around 1.3 mm and 0.87 mm. This helped researchers measure the gas's structure and motion and estimate its temperature.
What they saw was revealing. "We discovered a gigantic molecular jet," said Yasuo Fukui, professor emeritus at Nagoya University and lead author of this new discovery, which has been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The newly discovered jet signature is a strikingly straight and narrow trail of "heated" molecular gas about 26 light-years long and three light-years wide.
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