Astronomers have discovered a mysterious, unknown object in our galaxy that could be a breakthrough in the study of black holes.
The “very 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 was found to be 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 18 January.
The newly discovered object is heavier than all known neutron stars but lighter than the smallest black hole, leading researchers to believe it could be a never-before-seen example of a radio pulsar – a black hole binary.
The Milky Way rises above St Aidan’s Church in Thockrington, Northumberland, captured by photographer Tony Nellis, 24, 14 January 2024. Tony Nellis / SWNS A mysterious object and a rapidly spinning millisecond pulsar discovered by the highly sensitive MeerKAT Radio Telescope in South Africa. Sarah
The nature of objects in the “black hole mass gap” has not been widely studied, leading researchers to hope that the discovery will lead to scientific breakthroughs.
“It is possible for the nature of the friend to be attractive. The pulsar black hole system will be an important target for testing the theory of gravity and heavy neutron stars will provide new insights into nuclear physics at very high densities,” said Manchester University Professor of Astrophysics Ben Stappers, who led research on the project. in the UK.
This graphic shows the “solar mass” of objects detected in the stellar graveyard – the region in the population of objects that were once stars with no objects between 2.5 and 5 solar masses. LIGO-Virgo / Frank Elavsky & Aaron Geller
The discovery was made in a dense collection of old stars known as NGC 1851, where the celestial bodies are “much denser” than the rest of the galaxy, leading to orbital disruption and collisions, according to the researchers.
“We’re not done with this system yet,” said lead researcher Arunima Dutta of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy.
“Revealing the true nature of the companion will be a turning point in our understanding of neutron stars, black holes, and whatever else might be lurking in the black hole’s mass gap.”
The space object was found to be 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 a dense neutron star remains in collision with another star and collapses, it is believed to form a black hole, an inescapable gravitational field.
The heaviest neutron star — or the collapsed core of a massive supergiant star — ever discovered is 2.2 times the mass of our Sun and the lightest black hole is about five solar masses — with discovery weights somewhere in between.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
