Astronomers discover a massive neutron star that almost shouldn’t exist
According to scientists, a spinning neutron star has been discovered which is so densely compacted that it may be impossible for it to exist. It already goes on living on the tipping point where a sliver of increase in the pressure would cause the collapse of the pulsar into a black hole. A team of astronomers who are using the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia has found that this pulsar is the most massive neutron star ever measured. It has been coded J0740+6620.
The neutron star is a strange cosmic object which is the compressed remains of a massive star once it goes through a supernova explosion. These stars have a tipping point, where the intensity of its insides becomes so extreme that gravity overwhelms the ability of the neutron to collapse any further according to Scott Ransom, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. He also said that each of the neutron stars that have been found are great discoveries for physics, to help in understanding the matter, and the tipping point of these densities.
This particular neutron is the density of two suns and all their mass, coupled with the Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf, compressed to the size of Denver.
According to Thankful Cromartie, a University of Virginia grad, who now works as a fellow at NRAO, these celestial objects are interesting and give off a lot of atomic nuclei. They exist in a realm that is unreachable by humans as of now and learning more about the amount of pressure that physics limits itself at will help us cope better in astrophysics.
As part of their Search for gravitational waves, NRAO is now attempting this feat.
Maura McLaughlin, a professor at the West Virginia University, said that the Green Bank is trying to detect gravitational waves coming from pulsars. This observation of millisecond pulsars, which rotate rapidly, is important to this cause. This discovery is not limited to recording gravitational waves, though, but is part of a bigger discovery.
These neutron stars and pulsars are the densest objects existing in the normal realm that we are aware of. Denser than this is only a black hole which does not fall into the normal real. This is the closest we have ever come to see what the line is between the normal and abnormal, bringing humanity one step closer to discovering the secrets of the universe.
