A recent observation has identified an ambiguous celestial companion to a pulsar, located within the Milky Way, which poses a challenge to astronomers trying to categorize it. Using the MeerKAT Radio Telescope in South Africa, astronomers scrutinized the signals from millisecond pulsars amidst a star cluster situated 40,000 light years from our planet. These pulsars function as cosmic beacons, emitting radiation while rotating rapidly.
A Pulsar’s Peculiar Partner
These pulsars emit beams with a precision comparable to atomic clocks, and any disturbance in their motion can suggest the presence of nearby masses. The behavior of pulsar PSR J0514−4002E, in particular, indicates it has an unseen companion with a mass between 2.1 and 2.7 solar masses. This measurement suggests the object might be either an unusually massive neutron star or one of the smallest black holes yet identified.
Borderline Celestial Phenomena
The exact nature of the object remains uncertain, as astronomers are still debating the mass threshold at which neutron stars collapse into black holes. The existence of similar ambiguous objects has been noted before, such as one detected by LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave observatories in 2020. This newest companion might have formed from the collision of two smaller neutron stars, a theory that astronomers aim to test by further studying the pulsar’s timing patterns.
