Astronomers at West Virginia University in the United States have discovered the most massive neutron star to date, which packs 2.17 times the mass of the sun into a sphere only 20 to 30 kilometres.

This measurement approaches the limits of how massive and compact a single object can become without crushing itself down into a black hole, according to the study published on Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The neutron star is a rapidly spinning, dense celestial object that consists primarily of closely packed neutrons and that results from the collapse of a much larger stellar body. A single sugar-cube worth of neutron-star material would weigh 100 million tons on Earth.

Researchers from West Virginia University uncovered the star, approximately 4,600 light-years from Earth, through the Green Bank Telescope in the United States.

Gravity from a white dwarf companion star warps the space surrounding it, according to Einstein's general theory of relativity. This makes the pulses from the pulsar travel just a little bit farther as they travel through the distorted spacetime around white dwarf. The delay reveals the mass of the white dwarf, which in turn provides a mass measurement of the neutron star.



Contact
reader@banginews.com

Bangi News app আপনাকে দিবে এক অভাবনীয় অভিজ্ঞতা যা আপনি কাগজের সংবাদপত্রে পাবেন না। আপনি শুধু খবর পড়বেন তাই নয়, আপনি পঞ্চ ইন্দ্রিয় দিয়ে উপভোগও করবেন। বিশ্বাস না হলে আজই ডাউনলোড করুন। এটি সম্পূর্ণ ফ্রি।

Follow @banginews