Mysterious Object Discovered in the Milky Way
A team of researchers from the University of Manchester in England and the Max Planck Institute in Germany has made an exciting discovery, locating a millisecond pulsar 40 thousand light years away from Earth. These pulsars, which rotate 170 times per second, are a unique type of neutron star.
The discovery, made using the MeerKAT Radio Telescope in South Africa, has revealed that this particular pulsar is heavier than all known neutron stars but lighter than the smallest known black holes.
Neutron stars are formed when a giant star explodes as a supernova and the remaining part collapses into itself. The mass of the heaviest known neutron star is 2.2 times the mass of the Sun, while the lightest black hole is approximately 5 times the mass of the Sun.
Further analysis by the researchers has determined that the millisecond pulsar is located inside a stellar-mass black hole, formed when massive stars collapse due to their gravitational forces. The structure of objects within stellar-mass black holes is not fully understood, making this discovery a potential gateway to important breakthroughs in the field.
Ben Stappers from the University of Manchester described the research as an important data source for testing theories of gravity and nuclear physics, while Arunima Dutta from the Max Planck Institute emphasized the groundbreaking potential of the information to be obtained about the structure of the pulsar-black hole binary.
The study has been published in the peer-reviewed journal Science on January 18, and the researchers believe that this discovery will significantly impact our understanding of neutron stars, black holes, and the mysteries hidden inside stellar mass black holes.
