New Objective Discovered in the Milky Way

A team of international astronomers is excited to announce that they discovered a new, yet-to-be-identified object in the Milky Way.

The scientists of the University of Manchester in England and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany shared their exciting new findings in a peer-reviewed publication on Thursday, 18 January.

The object was discovered using the MeerKAT telescope array in South Africa while observing a large cluster of stars known as NGC 1851.

According to the news release, the object is a curious weight, as it is heavier than the heaviest measured neutron stars and yet simultaneously lighter than the lightest measured black holes.

Currently, specialists are speculating that the mass could either be a high-mass neutron – possibly two – or the much sought-after radio pulsar-black hole binary system.

“Either possibility for the nature of the companion is exciting,” Ben Stappers, the project lead of the English division, told an international publication.

“A pulsar–black hole system will be an important target for testing theories of gravity and a heavy neutron star will provide new insights in nuclear physics at very high densities,” he went on to explain.

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