Newly discovered unusual pulsar locked in a fiercely tight orbit with another neutron star
An important breakthrough in how we can understand dead star collisions and the expansion of the Universe has been made by an international team, led by the University of East Anglia.
They have discovered an unusual pulsar – one of deep space’s magnetized spinning neutron-star ‘lighthouses’ that emits highly focused radio waves from its magnetic poles.
The newly discovered pulsar (known as PSR J1913+1102) is part of a binary system – which means that it is locked in a fiercely tight orbit with another neutron star.
Neutron stars are the dead stellar remnants of a supernova. They are made up of the most dense matter known – packing hundreds of thousands of times the Earth’s mass into a sphere the size of a city.
In around half a billion years the two neutron stars will collide, releasing astonishing amounts of energy in the form of gravitational waves and light.
But the newly discovered pulsar is unusual because the masses of its two neutron stars are quite different – with one far larger than the other.
This asymmetric system gives scientists confidence that double neutron star mergers will provide vital clues about unsolved mysteries in astrophysics – including a more accurate determination of the expansion rate of the Universe, known as the Hubble constant.
The discovery, published today in the journal Nature, was made using the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.
Lead researcher Dr Robert Ferdman, from UEA’s School of Physics, said: “Back in 2017, scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) first detected the merger of two neutron stars.
“The event caused gravitational-wave ripples through the fabric of space time, as predicted by Albert Einstein over a century ago.
