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[Music throughout]

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Eta Carinae is a massive binary system 7,500 light-years away.

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[X-ray view]

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Its two stars are 90 and 30 times the Sun's mass and orbit each other every 5.5 years.

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New X-ray observations from NASA's NusSTAR mission show that their interaction

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creates cosmic rays by accelerating particles to nearly the speed of light.

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Both stars are so hot and bright they shed matter in the form of outflows called stellar winds.

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The smaller star's faster, thinner wind carves a tunnel through the primary's slow, thick outflow. 

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Where these winds collide, shockwaves accelerate particles, some of which crash into starlight.

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The collision ramps up the light's energy into X-ray or even gamma-ray territory.

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We detect cosmic ray particles at Earth. But because they're electrically charged

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they wander in the presence of magnetic fields. This means we can't tell where they're coming from.

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Now, thanks to NuSTAR, we know Eta Carinae is producing cosmic rays.

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It's more than a superstar.

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It's a cosmic ray gun.

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[Beeping]

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[Beeping]