http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/Cygnus_X-3_5D.htm

The Meinel Institute, a scientific think tank founded by Aden and Marjorie Meinel, formerly of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), has attempted to find the point source of the Ice Age excess of cosmic rays. Their best estimations place their origin in the northern sky, somewhere in the vicinity of Draco, the celestial dragon, even though they admit to first looking in Cygnus for a possible cosmic particle accelerator and finding none - Cygnus X-3 being overlooked.

 

The Meinels noted a strong correlation between the periods of cosmic ray excess on Earth and great changes in human behavioural patterns, especially around 40,000-35,000 years ago, when the first cave art started to appear in Western Europe and Neaderthal man disappeared from the fossil records. They speculate, as does British anthropological writer Denis Montgomery, that cosmic rays might well have been responsible for sudden accelerations in human evolution, an opinion I voiced myself in The Cygnus Mystery. It is also one that is finding support among geneticists today. Yet the idea is by no means new. Carl Sagan as far back as 1973 wrote in The Cosmic Connection that sudden leaps in human evolution were caused by cosmic rays coming from a 'distant neutron star'. He never stated which one, although I see it as strange coincidence that it was in 1972 that Cygnus X-3 was put on the astronomical map following a spectacular display of radio frequency emissions that increased its usual output by a thousandfold. The following year intense bursts of gamma rays coming from the same source coincided with powerful X-ray and infrared emissions, revealing the neutron star's 4.79-hour orbital signature for the first time.

 

In my recent book The Cygnus Mystery and also online (see 'Cygnus X-3 and the Cosmic Ray Question' at http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/thecygnusmystery_cygnusx3.htm) I cite the importance to science of Cygnus X-3, something acknowledged by Gergely Gabor Barnaföldi in his important new paper. I point out that not only are cygnet particles unique to physics, but that some of them have even managed to penetrate underground for hundreds of metres before breaking up into secondary muons, before being recorded by detectors such as Soudon in Minnesota and NUSEX in France. More significantly, cygnets are the ONLY known hadronic, or strongly interacting, cosmic particles repeatedly able to achieve such great depths, all others being stopped in the atmosphere or just beneath the surface of the planet.

 

Since 1981 particle detectors located deep underground in both the USA and Europe have detected unique cosmic particles inbound from Cygnus X-3. They come in 4.79 hour cycles, reflecting the star system's unique 4.79-hour orbital signature. This can only happen if the cosmic rays are arriving directly from source, implying that they travel the estimated 30,000 light years distance from Cygnus X-3 without either being deflected by galactic magnetic fields - a characteristic of charged particles - or decaying en route to Earth. This means that they have to be long-living neutral particles, as well as hadrons - strongly interacting particles - since they produce heavy showers of secondary particles known as muons when they hit the upper atmosphere.

 

When combined together, the specific characteristics of the strange particles from Cygnus X-3 become impossible to categorise.

So unique are the long-living neutral particles from Cygnus X-3 that they have been given their own name - 'cygnets', meaning particles specific to Cygnus, the constellation of the swan. Yet it is a name virtually unspeakable in particle physics, since the mere existence of such particles highlights an unsolvable controversy that over the past 25 years has become too hot to handle.

So much criticism was levelled during the mid 1980s at facilities reporting the presence deep underground of cygnets that today only one - Soudon in Minnesota, USA - even bothers to report their continued presence.

 

It has long been thought that Cygnus X-3 might well be a type a quark star or strange quark star - formed when a neutron star collapses. The problem is that when this happens the star produces so many particles known as strange quarks that it will become instable and collapse to a black hole. However, Barnafoldi and collaborators assume that extreme gravity allows the fifth dimension, normally curled up into 'rings' or folds, to come into play.

 

In the physical universe, the fifth dimension does not usually affect matter, but where strange quark stars are concerned, normal quarks are made to behave like strange quarks, which are forced to move more slowly through 4D space-time, since they need to curl around the folds of fifth dimensional space. This produces a certain stability within the star.

 

Barnaföldi et all assumed that Cygnus X-3's role as a strange quark star might help explain how cygnets are produced and why they possess such strange characteristics, for in his opinion they have quite literally been tweaked by the fifth dimension. In other words they were either forged in five dimensions, not four, or they were created by primary particles that bear fifth dimensional signatures.

 

As wild as these theories might seem, they were aired recently in New Scientist ('Look to quark stars for fifth dimension' NS 194:2609, 23 June 07, p. 12. Go to http://www.newscientist.com/data/pdf/press/2609/260912.pdf), while Barnaföldi's paper on the subject is published in the journal Astronomische Nachrichten in September 2007.(Preprint available at http://arxiv.org/pdf/0706.0378).

 

Following, you’ll se that there’s a huge interest and an impressive array of tools used by NASA for monitoring Cygnus X-3, since at least 9 years ago (well, they won’t bother you with such “details”).

 

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast25feb_1m.htm

"Cygnus X-3 is a black hole or a neutron star that's accreting matter from an companion star," explains Mike McCollough of the NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center. "Because of the deep gravity well, a huge amount of energy can be released in x-rays and gamma-rays. It's also a very bright radio source that undergoes massive flares from time to time."

During an intense flare in 1997, McCollough and colleagues made a high-resolution radio map of Cygnus X-3 using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), a continent-sized radio interferometer.

"When we looked at the images, lo and behold, there was definitely a one-sided radio jet, about 50 milliarcseconds long," recalled McCollough. "Two days later it extended to 120 milliarcseconds and then it disappeared. This likely makes Cyg X-3 a galactic blazar -- a jet source where we were looking straight down the jet."

 

"Cygnus X-3 may be the first example of a blazar here in our own galaxy," he continued. "It's the only case known of a Wolf-Rayet star with a compact companion. Wolf-Rayet stars are massive stars -- 7 to 50 solar masses -- that have blown away their outer envelope of hydrogen. What's left is mostly helium. These types of stars have a very vigorous stellar wind, and that's probably what's driving things in this source."

 

"We can't see Cygnus X-3 optically because it's in the galactic plane where optical extinction by interstellar dust obscures the source. Fortunately, we can see it at infrared (IR) wavelengths and that's how we know it's a Wolf-Rayet star, from the IR spectral lines. Modulation of the IR and the X-ray emission gives us the orbital period of the binary, only 4.8 hours."

 

The next opportunity to study Cygnus X-3 during a bright flare may be just around the corner. McCollough and colleagues believe that another eruption is imminent.

 

 "Just before a major flare, the radio and hard X-ray emission from Cygnus X-3 drops very low and stays there for days or weeks." explained McCollough. "It's as if something is building up before the explosion. This lets us predict major flares. On February 18 the radio emission from Cygnus X-3 dropped to very low levels and it's stayed there since. The hard X-ray (20-100 keV) emission which BATSE [on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, pictured right] usually detects from this source also vanished in late January. We believe this is the precursor of some major activity."

 

The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) was the most massive instrument ever launched by a NASA Space Shuttle in 1991. It will be one of the primary satellites observing Cyg X-3 when that binary system erupts. McCollough also uses the Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE) on CGRO to monitor precursor activity.

 

When Cygnus X-3 does erupt, McCollough is ready. He has been granted "Target of Opportunity" time to observe Cyg X-3 with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, and the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer. When Cygnus X-3 erupts -- any day now, says McCollough -- all of these spaceborne observatories will turn toward the X-ray source and begin collecting critical data at X-ray and gamma-ray wavelengths.

 

Radio astronomers are also on standby. McCollough and colleagues are currently monitoring Cyg X-3 using the Green Bank interferometer in West Virginia, the Ryle telescope in Britain, the RATAN 600 radio telescope in Russia, and the Very Large Array in New Mexico. All of these instruments will spring into action when the flare begins. McCollough and his collaborators have been granted observing time as well on the Very Long Baseline Array, which will monitor Cyg X-3 for three days after the flare to make detailed radio images of the jet.

 

This year, the Kepler spacecraft blasted into space as a major addition to the impressive array of facilities hunting for Cygnus-X3. Kepler contains a special telescope that will stare at 100,000 stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region of the Milky Way for more than three years as it trails Earth's orbit around the Sun.“ (That is until 2012. Are they expecting something to happen in Cygnus within the next 3 years?)