James Chadwick planned to study mathematics at the University of Manchester, but he accidentally joined the physics enrollment line and stayed there. That mistake changed his life, because he later discovered the neutron and won the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics.
What powers the Crab Nebula? A city-sized magnetized neutron star spinning around 30 times a second. Known as the Crab Pulsar, it is the bright spot in the center of the nebula's core. About 10 light-years across, the spectacular picture of the Crab Nebula (M1) frames a swirling central disk and complex filaments of surrounding and expanding glowing gas. The picture combines visible light from the Hubble Space Telescope in red and blue with X-ray light from the Chandra X-ray Observatory shown in white, and X-ray emission detected by Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) in purple. The central pulsar powers the Crab Nebula's emission and expansion by slightly slowing its spin rate, which drives out a wind of energetic electrons.
Image Copyright & Credit: NASA, ESA, ASI, Hubble, Chandra, IXPE