JANUARY 18, 2024
by University of Manchester
An artist’s impression of the system assuming that the massive companion star is a black hole. The brightest background star is its orbital companion, the radio pulsar PSR J0514-4002E. The two stars are separated by 8 million km and circle each other every seven days. Credit: Daniëlle Futselaar (artsource.nl)
An international team of astronomers have found a new and unknown object in the Milky Way that is heavier than the heaviest neutron stars known and yet simultaneously lighter than the lightest black holes known.
Using the MeerKAT Radio Telescope, astronomers from a number of institutions including The University of Manchester and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany found an object in orbit around a rapidly spinning millisecond pulsar located around 40,000 light years away in a dense group of stars known as a globular cluster.
Using the clock-like ticks from the millisecond pulsar they showed that the massive object lies in the so-called black hole mass gap.
It could be the first discovery of the much-coveted radio pulsar—black hole binary; a stellar pairing that could allow new tests of Einstein's general relativity and open doors to the study of black holes.
More:
https://phys.org/news/2024-01-lightest-black-hole-heaviest-neutron.html#google_vignette
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