Sign In
Learn bits
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

More Related Current Affairs View All

05 Mar

First-ever comprehensive survey of India’s river dolphins

'Prime Minister Narendra Modi released the results of the first-ever comprehensive population estimation of riverine dolphins – Gangetic and Indus dolphins – done in In

Read More

05 Mar

Arresting women at night

'The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court in Deepa versus S. Vijayalakshmi and Others ruled that the legal provision in the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), 2023, which

Read More

05 Mar

Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023

'The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) looking to wrap up public consultations on the draft Rules for the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 by Mar

Read More

India’s First Ai-Driven Magazine Generator

Generate Your Custom Current Affairs Magazine using our AI in just 3 steps