10 new dead star ‘monsters’ discovered at the heart of the Milky Way

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10 new ***** star ‘monsters’ discovered at the heart of the Milky Way

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An illustration of ten rapidly rotating ***** star pulsars in Terzan 5. | Credit: US NSF, AUI, NSF NRAO, S. Dagnello

Astronomers have discovered ten strange ***** stars, or “neutron stars,” lurking near the heart of the Milky Way. These weirdo neutron stars are also spinning, meaning they are “pulsars.” Scientists suspect the overly dense nature of this oddball globular cluster, located 18,000 light-years from Earth, could result in these rapidly spinning ***** stars taking on bizarre and twisted forms.

The lot, for instance, includes several “spider pulsars” that ******** stars with plasma webs and a speed ****** vampire star greedily feasting on its companion stars.

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are

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that can spin as fast as 700 times per second. They blast out beams of radiation from their poles that sweep across space like the beam of a celestial lighthouse. These newly uncovered pulsars are located together in the

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, which is home to hundreds of thousands of different types of stars with ages between 12 billion and 4.5 billion years. Astronomers were already aware of 39 pulsars in Terzan 5, one of the most crowded regions in

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.

“It’s very unusual to find exotic new pulsars,” Scott Ransom, a scientist with the U.S. National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO)

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. “But what’s really exciting is the wide variety of such weirdos in a single cluster.”

Related: Rapidly spinning ***** stars could unveil dark matter secrets

Speed demons and ravenous cosmic spiders

Ransom and colleagues discovered the pulsars with the

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 and the

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Tracking the location of the neutron stars and the timing of their rotations with MeerKAT and then comparing this to 20 years of Terzan 5 observations — made using the Green Bank Telescope — revealed the bizarre characteristics of these newly found ***** stars.

Two neutron stars are part of an incredibly rare

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, for example. Astronomers have discovered around 3,600 pulsars in the Milky Way, but only 20 of them have been double neutron-star binaries.

When these binaries form, one of the neutron stars pulls material from the other like a cosmic vampire. This transferred matter carries with it angular momentum that increases the spin of the neutron star, creating a “millisecond pulsar” that can spin hundreds of times per second. The newly found pair could set a record for such an object, appearing to spin faster than 716 rotations per second, the spin speed of the current record holder PSR J1748−2446ad, which is also located in Terzan 5.

This speed ****** ***** star wasn’t the only monster found lurking in Terzan 5, however.

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A yellow glowing orb to the right of the screen radiates out light. A small point in the center has green and purple beams to the top-right and bottom-left of it.

The team also uncovered three new rare spider pulsars. These pulsars are classed either as

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or

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depending on the nature of the companion star they devour.

Both types of stars waste away companion stars that come too close with a “web” of high-energy radiation. Redback spider pulsars prey on companion stars with masses between 10% and 50% of 

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, while ****** Widow spider pulsars ravage smaller stars with less than 5% of the sun’s mass.

Related Stories:

— NASA’s Hubble, Chandra space telescopes face possible budget cuts: report

— New kind of pulsar may explain how mysterious ‘****** widow’ systems evolve

— 

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The discovery of the “monster mash” of fearsome neutron stars could help astronomers better understand pulsars and the effect that evolving in a

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can have on them.

The researchers are already hoping to discover more of these cosmic weirdos in Terzan 5, calling on the assistance of brave citizen scientists. If you have what it takes to join this cosmic “monster squad,” you can commit your idle computer time to the

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project, which has already uncovered 90 new neutron stars,

The team’s research is published in the journal

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#***** #star #monsters #discovered #heart #Milky

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