The Most Massive Neutron Star We Know Of Is A Rotating Shredder

This massive neutron star was once a compact, collapsing star that shredded and ate virtually all of its stellar partner to become the highest in mass neutron star ever detected. One of several fastest-spinning neutron bright stars, its rotation rate is 707 times every second.

Understanding the strange quantum properties of matter within these extraordinarily compact objects is aided by the record-setting neutron star’s weight of 2.35 solar masses. Above that mass, neutron stars implode into a black hole and vanish.

To put that in perspective, a cubic inch of a neutron star weighs more than 10 billion metric tons. This implies that, outside of black holes, that are obscured by their event horizon and hence cannot be studied, their centers contain the highest density stuff in the cosmos. Because of this, the neutron star, a pulsar with said designation PSR J0952-0607, seems to be the densest visible body in the vicinity of Earth.

Typical, or “ordinary,” pulsars rotate and flash around roughly once per sec, a rate that makes sense given the typical spinning of a star preceding its collapse. However, certain pulsars cycle hundreds or even up to a thousand times every second, which cannot be explained without the hypothesis that mass has plummeted upon the neutron star and accelerated its rotation. Although some millisecond pulsars have observable companions, others do not.

Solitary millisecond pulsars may have had a partner in the past, but that companion has since been destroyed. They likely didn’t start off as loners, given that they can only exist in a pair, but they’ve since dwindled to nothing.

The black widow neutron star, having consumed a significant portion of its partner, now proceeds to heat & vaporize the partner to the point where it is reduced to planetary mass, if not obliterated entirely.

The study was published The Astrophysical Journal Letters.