Astronomers believe that it is a neutron star, but it amazes scientists with its properties. It is only 77 percent. The mass of our Sun, this is the lowest mass ever recorded for an object of this type. The previous record holder had a mass of 1.17 times the mass of the Sun. Interestingly, the studied neutron star has a lower mass than the minimum mass of a neutron star, which is predicted by existing theories. This could indicate that we don’t yet know much about these types of objects, or … Mysterious object is not a neutron star, but an unknown “cosmic singularity”.

Neutron stars Stars 8 to 10 times the mass of the Sun form during a supernova (a type of cosmic explosion). The matter of these objects is so dense that they have 1.4 – 2 times the mass of the Sun and 10 – 25 km in diameter. According to scientists, just one teaspoon of matter weighs about 6 billion tons.

The studied star is in the middle of the ruins The supernova HESS J1731-347. Scientists were able to calculate the distance from Earth, which is 8 150 light years. The star has a radius of 10.4 km and its mass is surprisingly low, equal to 0.77 times that of the Sun. This suggests that it may not actually be a neutron star, but another “hypothetical object” that has yet to be documented.

The scientists wrote in their research paper: “Our mass estimate makes the central object in HESS J1731-347 the lightest neutron star known to date and a more exotic object – that is, it could be a candidate for the so-called strange star“The strange star should look very similar to a neutron star, but contain more so-called. Strange quarks. They are the third lightest of all quarks (a type of elementary particle). Physicists have been searching for quark matter and strange quark matter for decades.

The astronomers write in the article: “The obtained mass and radius constraints are still fully consistent with the standard interpretation of a neutron star and can be used to improve astronomical constraints. […] Such a bright neutron star is visible, regardless of the assumed internal composition A very interesting object from an astronomical point of view“.