Astronomers have discovered a mysterious unknown object in our galaxy that could be a breakthrough in the study of black holes.
The “extremely dense remnant of a collapsed star” lies about 235,000 trillion miles from Earth in a globular star cluster in the Milky Way, officials said.
The space object is in orbit with the newly discovered pulsar PSR J0514-4002E, which rotates 170 times per second, according to radio light transmitted to Earth and documented by the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa.
The announcement was made by a group of international researchers from the Transients and Pulsars collaboration with MeerKAT on January 18.
The newly discovered object is heavier than all known neutron stars, but lighter than the smallest black holes, leading researchers to believe it could be an example of a never-before-discovered radiopulsar-black hole binary.
Milky Way rising over St Aidan’s Church in Thockrington, Northumberland, captured by photographer Tony Nellis, 24, January 14, 2024. Tony Nellis/SWNS The mysterious object and its rapidly spinning millisecond pulsar in orbit were discovered by the highly sensitive MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa. SARAO
The nature of objects in the “black hole mass gap” has not been extensively studied, leading researchers to hope that the discovery will lead to scientific advances.
“Any possibility is exciting for the nature of the partner. “A pulsar-black hole system will be an important target for testing theories of gravity and a heavy neutron star will provide new insights into nuclear physics at very high densities,” said Ben Stappers, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. directs the project’s research. in the United Kingdom.
This graph shows the “solar masses” of objects detected in the stellar graveyard, the area of the population of objects that were once stars without objects between 2.5 and 5 solar masses. LIGO-Virgo / Frank Elavsky and Aaron Geller
The discovery was made in a dense collection of ancient stars known as NGC 1851, where the celestial bodies are “much more compact” than the rest of the galaxy, causing orbital disruptions and collisions, according to the researchers.
“We are not done with this system yet,” said lead researcher Arunima Dutta of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy.
“Discovering the true nature of its companion will be a turning point in our understanding of neutron stars, black holes and anything else that may be lurking in the black hole mass gap.”
The space object is in orbit with the newly discovered pulsar PSR J0514-4002E, which rotates 170 times per second, according to radio light transmitted to Earth and documented by the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa. Springernature.com
When the dense remains of a neutron star collide with another star and collapse, they are believed to form a black hole, an inescapably dense gravitational field.
The heaviest neutron star (or collapsed core of a massive supergiant star) ever discovered is 2.2 times the weight of our Sun and the lightest black hole is about five solar masses, with the weight of the discovery in the middle.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn