The object, a neutron star, is now among the fastest spinning objects ever observed in the universe.
Astronomers have spotted pure chaos lurking in the cosmos. Thousands of light years away from Earth, a small yet intensely heavy star is releasing bursts of material as powerful as repeating atomic bombs while spinning wildly on its own axis.
Using NASA’s NICER (Neutron Star Interior Composition ExploreR) telescope, a team of astronomers discovered the strange object, and it’s now one of the fastest spinning objects ever observed. This neutron star, the collapsed core of a massive star, completes 716 rotations per second while pulling material from its companion star and releasing it in the form of thermonuclear bursts. The discovery is detailed in a paper recently published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Located 26,000 light-years away from Earth, the neutron star is part of an x-ray binary star system called 4U 1820-30. X-ray binaries consist of a normal star and a collapsed star—either a white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole—orbiting each other in a gravitational dance.
