NASA Space Telescope Maps Magnetic Fields of ‘Lighthouse’ Pulsar - UNIVERSE

For the first time, scientists have used NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) to directly measure the magnetic fields of PSR J1101−6101, a pulsar located within what is often referred to as the Lighthouse Nebula. The results provide new insight into the structure of some of the most extreme objects in the cosmos, as NASA continues to explore the secrets of how the universe works. A paper describing the results published Thursday in the Astrophysical Journal.

Scientists have successfully measured the magnetic field of the Lighthouse pulsar’s nebula using NASA’s IXPE. Their measurements confirm the theory that high-energy particles escape along the galaxy’s magnetic field lines. This composite image contains X-ray data from IXPE in blue (highlighted in the inset), the Chandra X-ray Observatory in purple, and radio data from CSIRO in green. The starfield is optical data from the 2MASS optical survey.

X-ray: Chandra: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ./J.T. Dinsmore et al.; IXPE: NASA/MSFC/J.T. Dinsmore et al., Radio: CSIRO/ATNF/ATCA; Optical: 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare

Fast facts:

A pulsar is a type of neutron star with a strong magnetic field that spins incredibly fast. The pulsar at the center of the Lighthouse Nebula is rotating 16 times per second.

Neutron stars are the leftover cores of massive stars, formed at the end of their life cycles, that possess more mass than the Sun. They are condensed down to the size of a city, making them natural laboratories for studying extreme physics.

Polarization is a property of light that describes the direction of its electric field vibrations. The polarization degree is a measurement of how aligned those vibrations are with each other.

In June 2025, IXPE spent nearly 18 days focused on the Lighthouse Nebula.

Astronomers studied two narrow X-ray offshoots extending from the pulsar to better understand how electrons at nearly the speed of light interact with this energetic system. The longer offshoot is known as the “filament,” and the shorter one is the “trail.”

When high-energy particles from the pulsar collide with the gas of interstellar space, they form a bow shock, like the bow wave formed at the front of a speeding boat. Most particles become trapped behind this bow shock, forming the turbulent trail behind the pulsar.

Researchers have suspected since 2008 that the highest-energy particles escape through this bow shock into interstellar space, flowing along the galaxy’s magnetic field lines to create the nebula’s long, thin filament.

“We wanted to test that theory,” said Jack Dinsmore, undergraduate student at Stanford University, who led the study. “The ‘smoking gun’ would come by measuring the polarization of the light, which indicates the magnetic field direction. If the magnetic field points along the filament, that confirms that the filament’s particles are flowing along the field.”

One challenge with these measurements is that the Lighthouse Nebula is relatively faint. To address this, IXPE scientists developed advanced analysis methods that use every bit of data, avoiding simplifying steps that could limit information. With these new tools and the new observations of the Lighthouse, the science team successfully measured the filament’s polarization. These techniques also gave a polarization measurement of the trail, and the pulsar’s emission signal.

Their analysis confirmed with more than 99% confidence that the magnetic field does indeed align with the particles’ flow.

While the parallel direction confirms models for the particle’s motion, the polarization degree was high enough to raise new questions.

“Many of the models for filaments assume strong magnetic turbulence,” said Roger Romani, a Stanford University professor who co-authored this paper. “The high polarization degree we measured indicates lower turbulence than such models require.”

The IXPE observations also showed that the magnetic field responsible for X-ray emission had to be parallel to the trail. However, the authors collected radio frequency observations showing a magnetic field pointing almost exactly perpendicular.

“The striking divergence in magnetic field orientations observed between radio and X-ray wavelengths provides compelling evidence for the highly structured nature of these objects,” said Niccolò Bucciantini of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics and co-author of the study. “This marks the first clear indication that particles of different energies occupy distinct regions within the system, hinting at the presence of multiple, and potentially very different, acceleration mechanisms at work.”

More about IXPE

The IXPE mission, which continues to provide unprecedented data enabling groundbreaking discoveries about celestial objects across the universe, is a joint NASA and Italian Space Agency mission with partners and science collaborators in 12 countries. It is led by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and BAE Systems, Inc. manages spacecraft operations together with the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder. 

Learn more about IXPE’s ongoing mission here: https://www.nasa.gov/ixpe 

Source: NASA Space Telescope Maps Magnetic Fields of ‘Lighthouse’ Pulsar - NASA Science

The Healthy-Diet Paradox: Why Some Young Non-Smokers Are Getting Lung Cancer

Lung cancer has a well-worn story: it happens to older smokers, more often men, usually after decades of cigarette exposure. A new study presented at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting complicates that story in an uncomfortable way, and the twist involves broccoli, not cigarettes.

Researchers from the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center looked at 187 people diagnosed with lung cancer by age 50, most of whom had never smoked. When they compared these patients’ diets to the general U.S. population using the Healthy Eating Index, a surprising pattern emerged: the patients scored higher, not lower, than average. They ate more dark green vegetables, legumes, and whole grains than typical American adults. 

A counter-intuitive finding 

Lead investigator Jorge Nieva, a medical oncologist at USC Norris, put it bluntly: young non-smokers who eat unusually well appear to be developing lung cancer at higher rates. That is the opposite of what decades of nutrition science would predict, and it points toward something in the food itself — or on it — rather than the food’s nutritional content.

Pesticides, not produce, are the prime suspect

The researchers are careful to say fruits, vegetables, and whole grains are not the problem. Their working hypothesis is pesticide residue: conventionally grown produce and grains tend to carry higher pesticide levels than dairy, meat, or many processed foods, simply because of how they’re farmed. That lines up with older research showing agricultural workers with long-term pesticide exposure have elevated lung cancer rates.

There’s a second thread here worth pulling on: women under 50 who have never smoked are developing lung cancer more often than men in the same age group, and in this study, women also reported eating more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains than men did. Whether that’s cause, correlation, or coincidence isn’t yet known, but it’s exactly the kind of pattern that makes a hypothesis worth chasing.

What the study can’t yet tell us

A few important caveats. This is an association, not a mechanism, the researchers didn’t measure pesticide levels in the food participants actually ate; they estimated exposure using published averages for whole food categories. That’s a coarse proxy, and it’s why Nieva is careful to call the pesticide link unproven. The next phase of the work will measure pesticide metabolites directly in patients’ blood or urine, which should get much closer to a real answer.

It’s also worth remembering that lung cancer in never-smokers under 50 is biologically distinct from the tobacco-driven disease seen in older patients, earlier work from the same research group (the Genomics of Young Lung Cancer Project) found these early-onset cancers represent genuinely different subtypes, not just an earlier version of the same disease.

Should you stop eating vegetables?

No, and the researchers aren’t suggesting that either. The benefits of a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains are backed by an enormous body of evidence for heart disease, diabetes, and most cancers. What this study raises is a much narrower, more specific question: whether residues from conventional farming practices could be quietly working against one of the very foods meant to protect us. If that hypothesis holds up under direct biomarker testing, it wouldn’t be an argument against vegetables, it would be an argument for cleaner ways of growing them.

For now, this is a lead, not a verdict. But it’s a good example of how epidemiology works: notice a pattern nobody expected, resist the urge to explain it away, and go measure the thing directly.

Source: University of Southern California – Health Sciences, presented at the AACR Annual Meeting 2026.
https://news.keckmedicine.org/eating-fruits-vegetables-and-whole-grains-may-increase-chance-of-early-onset-lung-cancer/ 

Source: The Healthy-Diet Paradox: Why Some Young Non-Smokers Are Getting Lung Cancer