Mysterious heavy object found in Milky Way

[Kyng]

https://news.sky.com/story/mysterious-ne...g-13051223

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.

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So, if it's intermediate in mass between the heaviest-known neutron star and the lightest-known black hole, perhaps it could be a neutron star in the process of collapsing into a black hole? (Or, as suggested in the article, it could be a pulsar/black hole pairing)

Either way, I'll be interested to find out more!

[ZandraJoi]

I find it amazing how they can say it's a "heavy object". It could be of rock or gas which would determine the weight. Unless they already did that lol

[Kyng]

I find it amazing how they can say it's a "heavy object". It could be of rock or gas which would determine the weight. Unless they already did that lol

Well, it sounds like it's waaaaaaaaaay denser than either of those things .

A teaspoonful of neutron star matter would weigh around 10 million tonnes. And this object would be even denser than that!

Presumably, we're not detecting this thing directly - but observing its gravitational impact on other nearby things.

[deyana]

Interesting.  Space is forever fascinating.