A new and unknown object in our galaxy is heavier than the heaviest neutron stars known to scientists – and yet it is lighter than the lightest known black holes.
A new and mysterious object has been discovered in the Milky Way and could be a combination of a black hole and a special type of star.
Found 40,000 light years away in our galaxy, the potentially new type of space entity appears to have unique qualities.
It falls within what researchers call the ‘black hole mass gap’ – making it a rare and little understood formation.
It was found orbiting a millisecond pulsar – a neutron (collapsed) star that pulses radiation and spins hundreds of times a second – and could be the first pulsar-black hole pairing ever seen.
Such a merger could allow new tests of Einstein’s general theory of relativity and opens the door to further study of black holes.
Ben Stappers, the UK project lead, said a pulsar-black hole system will be an “important target for testing theories of gravity”.
If it is a heavy neutron star, meanwhile, it “will provide new insights in nuclear physics at very high densities”, he added.
When neutron stars – the ultra-dense remains of a dead star – collect too much mass, they collapse; but what comes after this is subject to debate, with some believing they could become black holes.
It is thought the total mass required for a neutron star to collapse is 2.2 times the mass of the sun.