SUMMARY: Astronomers have discovered a binary system of a blue giant and a pulsar that operate as a natural particle accelerator, raising the energy levels of simple photons to some of the highest possible energies. The discovery was made by while watching how the pulsar periodically passes through disk of material ejected by the rapidly spinning blue giant. Each time the pulsar sweeps through this material, its intense magnetic field interacts with the ejected material and boosts photons from regular visible light into the range of super-high gamma rays which blast out in all directions. Some of this radiation interacts with our atmosphere, which is why we can detect it here on Earth.

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