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Science & Tech.
Mahesh

02/08/22 14:28 PM IST

'Black Widow'

In News 
  • Scientists have measured the mass of a neutron star named PSR J0952-0607, and found that it's the most massive neutron star discovered yet, clocking in at a whopping 2.35 times the mass of the Sun.
Neutron Star 
  • A neutron star is like one giant nucleus, but when you have one-and-a-half solar masses of this stuff, which is about 500,000 Earth masses of nuclei all clinging together, it's not at all clear how they will behave.
  • Neutron stars are the collapsed cores of massive stars that were between around 8 and 30 times the mass of the Sun, before they went supernova and blew most of their mass off into space.
  • These cores, tending to be around 1.5 times the mass of the Sun, are among the densest objects in the Universe; the only thing denser is a black hole.
PSR J0952-0607
  • PSR J0952-0607 was already one of the most interesting neutron stars in the Milky Way.
  • It's what is known as a pulsar – a neutron star that is spinning very fast, with jets of radiation emitting from the poles.
  • As the star spins, these poles sweep past the observer (us) in the manner of a cosmic lighthouse so that the star appears to pulse.
  • These stars can be insanely fast, their rotation rate on millisecond scales. PSR J0952-0607 is the second-fastest pulsar in the Milky Way, rotating a mind-blowing 707 times per second. 
  • It's also what is known as a "black widow" pulsar.
  • The star is in a close orbit with a binary companion – so close that its immense gravitational field pulls material from the companion star.
  • This material forms an accretion disk that whirls around and feeds into the neutron star, a bit like water swirling around a drain. Angular momentum from the accretion disk is transferred to the star, causing its spin rate to increase.
Source- PIB

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