They discover an unknown object in the Milky Way

The discovery of the object was made by observing a large star cluster known as NGC 1851 located in the southern constellation of Dovecote.

Photo: University of M

The MeerKAT radio telescope has found an unknown object in the Milky Way, heavier than the heaviest neutron stars and lighter than the lightest black holes. The discovery was made by several institutions, including the University of Manchester and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy. (Read: Ingenuity: NASA reestablishes contact with helicopter on Mars)

Scientists found this object orbiting a rapidly rotating millisecond pulsar located about 40,000 light-years away in a dense group of stars known as a globular cluster.

The discovery of the object, presented in Science, was made by observing a large star cluster known as NGC 1851 located in the southern constellation of Dovecote.

Using the ticks of the pulsar, similar to those of a millisecond clock, they demonstrated that the massive object is located in the so-called black hole mass space. It could be the first discovery of the much-coveted radiopulsar-black hole binary; a stellar pairing that could allow new tests of Einstein’s general relativity and open the doors to the study of black holes.

“Astronomers believe that a collision between two neutron stars may have created the huge object that now orbits the radio pulsar,” the University of Manchester said in a statement. (Reads: NASA publishes the first photos of samples taken from the asteroid Bennu)

The team was able to detect faint pulses coming from one of the stars, identifying it as a radio pulsar, a type of rapidly rotating neutron star that projects beams of radio light into the Universe like a cosmic beacon. The pulsar rotates more than 170 times per second, and each rotation produces a rhythmic pulse, like the ticking of a clock.

The ticking of these pulses is regular, and by observing how the timing of the ticking changes, using a technique called pulsar synchronization, they were able to make extremely precise measurements of their orbital motion.

Astronomers believe that the total mass needed for a neutron star to collapse is 2.2 times the mass of the Sun. This discovery may help finally understand these objects. (Read also: The Japanese SLIM probe reached the Moon, but the solar panels stopped generating energy)

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2024-01-22 00:20:00
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