Scientists have discovered 10 ‘monster’ neutron dead stars at the heart of the Milky Way and they are spinning rapidly.
The stars, called pulsars, are clustered together in Terzan 5 in the constellation Sagittarius, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of others. Pulsars can be billions of times more dense than other stars and spin rapidly, with bright pulses of light emitting from their magnetic fields, so they’re much easier to pick up when gazing at the skies.
Astronomers already had 39 pulsars recorded in the area, but have now added 10 more.
The discovery was made by an international team of astronomers from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy.
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“It’s very unusual to find exotic new pulsars. But what’s really exciting is the wide variety of such weirdos in a single cluster,” said Scott Ransom, from the National Science Foundation at the NRAO.
“Without the NSF Green Bank Telescope’s archive, we wouldn’t have been able to characterize these pulsars and understand their astrophysics,” adds Ransom.
Scientists saw two of the stars pulled into each other’s orbit as a binary system, and there has only been 20 identified as double neutron-star binaries in our galaxy so far, despite 3,600 recordings of known pulsars.
When pulsars become binaries, the gravitational pull from one can cause the other to spin faster by stealing material and energy from the second. The new discovery could be a record-breaker for the fastest spinning puslar in a double neutron-star system and the longest orbit of its kind.
Scientists find rare ‘Black Widows’ dead stars in the Milky Way
Astronomers also discovered three new rare pulsar ‘spider’ binary system, referred to as Black Widows or Redbacks. There are already five known in the cluster.
A spider binary system is when a companion star falls into the orbit and a web of plasma fills the space between the two, with the companion star slowly dissolving over time.
The new discoveries allow scientists to understand globular clusters, neutron stars and the theory of general relativity better.
The project has already discovered more than 90 new neutron stars.
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