Astronomers have identified a newly formed pulsar, PSR J1631–4722, located 23,000 light-years away. This object resides within the remnants of a supernova — a cloud of stellar material left behind after the explosion of a massive star. Once, the pulsar and this cloud were part of a single massive star, similar to Betelgeuse, with a mass at least 15 times that of the Sun.
Such stars have short lifespans by cosmic standards, living only about 10–15 million years. They eventually explode as supernovae, shedding their outer layers while their cores collapse to incredibly small sizes — just a few tens of kilometers across, comparable to a large earthly city, yet retaining twice the mass of the Sun.
This collapse creates a neutron star, an ultra-dense object composed almost entirely of neutrons. These stars are called pulsars due to their rhythmic “pulsing” radiation, a result of their rotation and tilted magnetic axis. The newly discovered pulsar, PSR J1631–4722, spins nearly ten times per second, with a rotation period of 118 milliseconds.
With an estimated age of less than 34,000 years, this pulsar is relatively young in astronomical terms, indicating that the supernova that birthed it occurred quite recently. Discoveries like this one help scientists better understand the processes behind the formation and evolution of neutron stars.
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