Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars, highly dense stars composed almost entirely of neutrons. They are formed when massive stars run out of fuel, collapse, and explode.
Recently, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory spotted a young pulsar blazing through the Milky Way at a speed of around a million miles per hour. This pulsar is one of the fastest objects of its kind ever seen.
Chandra observed the pulsar racing through the remnants of the supernova that formed it, G292.0+1.8, around 20,000 light-years away from Earth. The speed of this pulsar is almost 30% higher than a previous estimate of the pulsar’s speed. This speed indicates that the G292.0+1.8 and its pulsar may be significantly younger than astronomers previously thought.
Comments are closed.