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A team of researchers has discovered through the telescope Green Bank (GBT) in Virginia (U.S.) the neutron star-more massive, up to date . The pulsar , called J0740 + 6620, contains 2.17 times the mass of the Sun (which is 333, 000 times that of Earth) in an area of just 20 or 30 miles in diameter. The discovery is unusual, since the measurement is approaching the limits of how massive and compact, you can get to be a single object without collapsing into a black hole. [The previous record].

The star was detected by chance while ran quickly next to his companion, a white dwarf , to about 4,600 light-years from Earth. The couple was casually found during observations of routine in search of gravitational waves from the pulsars.

The neutron stars are the remnants tablets of massive stars that have become supernovae. They are created when giant stars die, their cores collapse, with the protons and electrons merging together to form neutrons. “Neutron stars are as mysterious as fascinating,” he says Thankful Cromartie, of the University of Virginia and co-author of the study. “These objects are the size of a city are essentially atomic nuclei gargantuan . Are so massive that their inner acquire properties rare. Find the maximum mass that physics and nature allow you can teach us a lot about this realm is inaccessible in astrophysics”.

In effect, the objects are terribly massive. A cube of material of star of neutron of the size of a sugar cube, would weigh 100 billion tons here on Earth, or nearly the same as the entire human population.

atomic Clocks

pulsars get their name because the beams twins of radio waves emitted from their magnetic poles. These beams sweep through space in the form of a lighthouse. Some rotate hundreds of times per second.

Given that pulsars rotate with a speed and regularity so phenomenal, astronomers can use them as the equivalent of cosmic atomic clocks. Such timing-precise has helped astronomers to study the nature of space-time, measure the masses of the stellar objects and improve their understanding of general relativity.

In this case, this precision cosmic provided a way for astronomers to calculasen the mass of the two stars. When the pulsar passes behind its companion white dwarf, there is a subtle delay (of the order of 10 millionths of a second) in the time of arrival of the signals. This phenomenon is known as “delay Shapiro” . In essence, the gravity of the white dwarf star slightly deformed the space around it, according to the general theory of relativity of Einstein. This deformation means that the pulses of the neutron star rotating have to travel a little farther as they move through the distortions of space-time caused by the white dwarf.

astronomers can use the amount of this delay to calculate the mass of the white dwarf. And once you know the mass of one of the members of the couple, it is a relatively simple process to accurately determine the mass of the other.

Soup of quarks

while astronomers and physicists have studied these objects for decades, there remain many mysteries about its nature: how the neutrons are crushed they become “superfluidos” and flow freely? Does it break down into a soup of quarks subatomic or other particles exotic? What is the tipping point when the gravity due to the matter and form a black hole?

“These stars are very exotic,” says Maura McLaughlin, professor of physics and astronomy of the University of Eberly. “We don’t know what they’re made of and a question that is really important is how massive they can be. Has implications for the material is very exotic that we just can’t create in a laboratory on Earth.”