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28 October 2019 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Anja Aucamp
Dr Brain van Soelen and Prof Pieter Meintjies
UFS scientists, Prof Pieter Meintjes and Dr Brian van Soelen, are part of the prestigious H.E.S.S. collaboration that recently published in Nature Astronomy.

Think of an object with a mass exceeding that of the Sun, squeezed into a volume of a sphere with the radius of a city like Bloemfontein. This very dense, compact object, known as a pulsar, is also a great source of energy. According to Physics Professor, Prof Pieter Meintjes, this pulsar (neutron star produced in supernova explosion) is also a key element of a recently submitted paper in Nature Astronomy.

Prof Meintjes and Dr Brian van Soelen, Senior Lecturer, both from the Department of Physics at the University of the Free State (UFS), were part of the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) collaboration of 220-plus scientists worldwide who worked on the paper Resolving the Crab pulsar wind nebula at tera-electronvolt energies, published in the prestige journal Nature Astronomy. 

According to Prof Meintjes, the fact that the paper was accepted for publication in Nature Astronomy testifies of the importance of this finding in the high-energy astrophysics community.

Powerful generators of electricity

He elaborates on the study: “The name pulsar originates from the fact that rotating neutron stars produced in supernova explosions produce beams of radiation, much like a lighthouse. Every time the beam intersects the observer’s line of sight, the observer receives a pulse of radiation.”

“As a result of this enormous mass squeezed into a small volume, these objects have the same density as that of an atomic nucleus. These objects (very dense pulsars) spin very rapidly and have enormous magnetic fields; for example, the pulsar at the centre of the Crab Nebulae spins around its axis once every 33 milliseconds (millisecond: one thousandth of a second) and possesses a magnetic field strength of the order of one tera-Gauss (tera – million x million). For comparison, the average strength of the Earth’s magnetic field is 0.5. Gauss and the magnetic field strength on the Sun ranges between 1 000 and 4 000 Gauss.”

“Because of this very super-strong rapid-spinning magnet, enormous electric fields are induced that can accelerate particles such as electrons and protons to energies in excess of one tera-electronvolt (optical light that are emitted by an ordinary lightbulb has energies of the order of one electronvolt).”

Prof Meintjes continues: “This means that these fast-rotating neutron stars are extraordinary powerful generators of electricity, which fills the surrounding cloud (supernova remnant) with super-high energy-charged particles that can produce, in turn, very high energy gamma rays through various processes such as synchrotron radiation and inverse-Compton radiation, to name a few.”

H.E.S.S. collaboration 

Above one tera-electronvolt, the gamma rays are detected by huge ground-based telescopes such as H.E.S.S., utilising the Earth’s atmosphere.

“When these high-energy gamma rays enter the atmosphere, they produce showers of super-relativistic particles that produce Cherenkov light – detected by the telescope. The technique is called the Atmospheric Cherenkov Technique (ACT).”

HESS
The High Energy Stereoscopic System. (Photo: Supplied)

“The H.E.S.S. gamma-ray collaboration is but one collaboration that has studied this source intensively over the past couple of decades or so.  Being the most powerful gamma-ray telescope facility currently operational, very careful analysis of the data managed to reveal that the gamma-ray emitting region inside the nebula is about 10 times bigger in size than the region where the x-rays are emitted within the nebula.” 

“This has solved a long-standing question as to how big the gamma-ray emitting region within these supernova remnants are, compared to the region where the x-rays, for example, originates,” says Prof Meintjes. 

Both Prof Meintjes and Dr Van Soelen are members of this prestigious H.E.S.S. collaboration. Their participation in this project, together with scientists from universities such as the University of Oxford, the University of Leicester, and the University of Bordeaux, opens up valuable research opportunities for UFS postgraduate students to enter the international stage and interact with the best scientists in the world.

They are also members of the editorial board responsible for the internal review of research papers before being submitted to more prestigious journals, for example, Nature Astronomy. Dr Van Soelen is also a coordinator of multi-wavelength follow-up observations within the H.E.S.S. collaboration. 

This is the second time that Prof Meintjes published in Nature Astronomy. Previously, he was co-author of a paper on emission from a white dwarf pulsar, showing that fast-rotating white dwarf stars could in fact mimic emission from neutron star pulsars. He developed the theoretical model reported in that paper, explaining the multi-wavelength emission from radio to X-ray energies.


News Archive

A model of resilience – Dr Anja Botha probes into the ability to recover from trauma
2014-12-02

She may have been awarded her doctorate degree only in July 2014, but Psychology lecturer at the University of the Free State (UFS), Dr Anja Botha, is already making a name for herself with her latest research.

Her study aims to develop a model of resilience for South African adolescents exposed to trauma. “The broad field, within which I work, is that of Developmental Psychology, with a specific focus on child and adolescent development and therapy,” says Dr Botha. 

Resilience studies are situated within Developmental Psychology since normal developmental tasks – such as achieving self-confidence and building supportive relationships – contribute greatly to children’s resilience. Resilience broadly refers to the individual’s ability to ‘bounce back’ after being exposed to adversity.

“The model of resilience which I compiled was a good fit for my participant group, indicating that the model explains the development of resilience in these adolescents well. The factors that I found to promote resilience in the South African context include various coping skills, intra- and interpersonal strengths, family involvement, and school engagement.

“Thus, aside from my passion for resilience studies, I am also very much interested in coping, strength-based interventions, parental guidance and school-based programmes.”

Dr Botha was awarded a Donald J Cohen fellowship in August 2014 during the 21st World Congress of the International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists and Allied Professions. The fellowship is in recognition of her work as an emerging international scholar in the field of child and adolescent mental health. This award was based on both her research as well as her involvement in the training of postgraduate students in child psychology.

She is currently supervising a number of master’s students’ research on various constructs related to resilience.

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