- Written by Nina Massey
- PA science correspondent
The discovery of this object was made using the MeerKAT radio telescope array in South Africa.
Astronomers have discovered a new object in the Milky Way galaxy that is more massive than the heaviest neutron star known to scientists, but lighter than the lightest known black hole.
Researchers in Manchester and Germany discovered that it was orbiting a millisecond pulsar 40,000 light years away.
Millisecond pulsars rotate very quickly (hundreds of times per second).
Project leader Ben Stappers, professor of astrophysics at the University of Manchester, said it was “exciting”.
Researchers from the University of Manchester and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn say this is a combination that could open the door to research into binaries of radio pulsars and black holes, a combination that could enable new tests of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. We believe this may be the first discovery of of a black hole.
Professor Stappers added: “Pulsar-black hole systems will be important targets for testing theories of gravity, and massive neutron stars will provide new insights into very dense nuclear physics.” Ta.
Neutron stars, the ultra-dense remains of dead stars, collapse when their mass becomes too large.
What will become of them afterward has sparked much speculation, but it is thought that they could become black holes.
“Mass Gap”
The total mass required for a neutron star to collapse is thought to be 2.2 times that of the Sun.
The lightest black holes created by these stars are much larger, about five times more massive than the Sun, creating what is known as the “black hole mass gap.”
The nature of objects within this mass gap is unknown and difficult to study.
Researchers say the discovery could help scientists ultimately understand these objects.
The discovery of the object was made while observing a large star cluster known as NGC 1851 south of the constellation Columba using the MeerKAT radio telescope array in South Africa.
Astronomers say the stars are so densely packed that they can interact with each other, disrupting their orbits and, in the worst-case scenario, colliding with each other.
They believe that a collision between two neutron stars could have created the massive object that is currently orbiting the radio pulsar.
Although the research team cannot conclusively say whether they have discovered the heaviest neutron star ever, the lightest black hole, or a new exotic star variant, the They have discovered something that will help them study the properties of matter under extreme conditions. universe.
The results of this study were published in the journal Science.
