Astronomers have discovered a new and unknown object in the Milky Way Galaxy, heavier than the heaviest neutron stars known to scientists, but at the same time lighter than the lightest known black holes.
The team of scientists from a number of institutions, including the University of Manchester and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany, found the object in orbit around an intensely rotating pulsar with a rotation period of milliseconds, 40,000 light-years away in a dense cluster of stars known as Globular star cluster.
Millisecond pulsars are a type of pulsar that spin very quickly, hundreds of times per second.
Scientists say that this mysterious object is a pulsating star in binary form with a compact body in the mass gap between neutron stars and black holes.
According to scientists, this may be the first discovery of a radio pulsar, a conjunction that could allow new tests of Einstein’s general relativity and open the doors to the study of black holes.
Ben Stubbers, professor of astrophysics at the University of Manchester, said: “The pulsating black hole system will be an important target for testing theories of gravity, and the heavy neutron star will provide new insights into nuclear physics at very high densities.”
