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The neutron star with the highest mass ever detected tests the limits of physics

2019-09-17T02:52:37.912Z


Neutron stars are the smallest in the universe, with a diameter comparable to the size of a city like Chicago or Atlanta. They are the leftover remains of supernovae. But they are amazing ...


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(CNN) - Astronomers have detected the largest neutron star in history, and it almost shouldn't even exist.

Neutron stars are the smallest in the universe, with a diameter comparable to the size of a city like Chicago or Atlanta. They are the leftover remains of supernovae. But they are incredibly dense, with masses larger than that of our Sun. So to imagine it think of the Sun compressed in a big city.

In the case of the newly detected neutron star, called J0740 + 6620, it has 333,000 times the mass of the Earth and 2.17 times the mass of the Sun. But the star is only 24 kms in diameter. It is 4,600 light years from Earth.

These dimensions are close to the limit of how much mass a compact object can contain before it is crushed in a black hole.

The neutron star spins rapidly, which is called a pulsar because they send beams of radio waves from each magnetic pole. The rays mimic the movement of the light rays of a lighthouse.

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Pulsars act like atomic clocks because they pulse regularly, so astronomers can use them to study space and time.

The star was detected by the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. The researchers published their findings about the star on Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy .

The researchers were not necessarily looking for this neutron star. It was a coincidence while looking for gravitational waves.

"At Green Bank, we are trying to detect gravitational waves from pulsars," said Maura McLaughlin, author of the Eberly study and distinguished professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of West Virginia. “To do that, we need to observe many pulsars of milliseconds, which are rapidly rotating neutron stars. This is not a gravitational wave detection document, but one of the many important results that have emerged from our observations. ”

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They were able to measure their mass thanks to a white dwarf companion star that deformed the space around both stars. This deformation acted as a way to accelerate the pulses of the pulse through space. They could know the mass of the white dwarf and the neutron star in this way through the "Shapiro Delay."

"Neutron stars are as mysterious as they are fascinating," said Thankful Cromartie, a graduate student at the University of Virginia and a Grote Reber predoctoral fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia. “These objects the size of a city are essentially huge atomic nuclei. They are so large that their interiors acquire strange properties. Finding the maximum mass that physics and nature allow can teach us a lot about this inaccessible realm in astrophysics. ”

Because of their mysterious nature, astronomers still want to answer more questions about neutron stars and this unique star could help them. They want to know if the crushed neutrons become a type of “superfluid,” what the result looks like and where the actual turning point is when gravity takes effect.

"The location of this binary star system created a fantastic cosmic laboratory," said Scott Ransom, co-author of the study and astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. “Neutron stars have this turning point where their interior densities become so extreme that the force of gravity exceeds even the ability of neutrons to withstand additional collapse. Each neutron star that we meet with a record mass brings us closer to identifying that tipping point and helps us to understand the physics of matter at these amazing densities. ”

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Source: cnnespanol

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