Astronomers discover ‘unknown object’ in galaxy

Astronomers have discovered a new and unknown object in the galaxy that is heavier than the heaviest neutron stars known to scientists but still lighter than the lightest black hole.

Researchers from several institutions, including the University of Manchester and Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, discovered the object 40,000 light-years away in a cluster of stars known as the Global Cluster orbiting a millisecond pulsar.

Millisecond pulsars are a type of pulsar (neutron stars that emit radiation) that spin very quickly, hundreds of times a second.

According to experts, this could be the first discovery of a radio pulsar and black hole binary. This pair can lead to new experiments of Einstein’s general theory of relativity and open up new avenues of black hole studies.

Ben Steppers, professor of astrophysics at the University of Manchester and head of the UK project, says: ‘In any case, both possibilities are not without interest.

“The pulsar, or black hole system, will be an important target for testing theories of gravity, and the extremely dense heavy neutron star will provide new information in the field of nuclear physics.”

When neutron stars, dead stars with very large remnants, gain too much mass, their existence shrinks.

What do they become after that? This is the basis of many speculations but it is believed that they could become black holes.

It is believed that a neutron star needs about two-tenths of the mass of the Sun to collapse.

The faintest black holes produced by these stars are about five times more massive than the Sun, causing a phenomenon known as the ‘black hole mass gap’.

The nature of the objects in this large gap is unknown and difficult to study.

Researchers say the latest discovery could help scientists finally understand these astronomical phenomena.

The new discovery was made using the Meerkat telescope to observe a large group of stars in the star cluster known as NGC 1851 in the southern part of Columba (the name of the star cluster).

Astronomers say that there are so many stars here that they can interact with each other, disrupt their orbits and, in extreme cases, collide.

They believe that a collision between two neutron stars must have created the massive object now orbiting the radio pulsar.

Although the team of scientists cannot definitively say that they have discovered the largest neutron star ever, the lightest black hole or even a new star, they have discovered something that the universe has discovered. will help in research on the properties of matter under extreme conditions.

The results of this research have been published in the journal Science.

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