Cosmic Heavyweight: Neutron Star Sets Mass Record ⚡ экспресс
Astronomers have refined the mass of the neutron star PSR J0952-0607 — it turned out to be record-breakingly heavy: 2.35 solar masses. That's like squeezing Mount Everest down to the size of a sugar cube. Such enormous mass poses new puzzles about what neutron stars might actually be made of.
In a dance with an ordinary star, astronomers have found a true heavyweight—a neutron star with 2.35 times the mass of the Sun. That's more than any other whose mass has been precisely measured. These objects are born when a star explodes as a supernova and its core collapses into a city-sized sphere. Just a little more mass, and the heavyweight would punch through the floor, collapsing into a black hole—the edge lies at about 2.27 solar masses. To weigh the invisible companion, scientists used brightness measurements and spectral analysis. By tracking the shift in spectral lines—an effect discovered by Christian Doppler—they calculated the orbital speed of the visible star, which revealed the wobbles caused by the heavyweight's gravity. The first neutron stars—pulsars—were spotted by Jocelyn Bell Burnell, and Fritz Zwicky predicted them back in the 1930s. This record shrinks the mystery: how matter resists pressures billions of billions of times stronger than Earth's. Inside such a star, a teaspoon of matter weighs as much as Mount Everest, yet it flows like a frictionless fluid. Knowing the mass limit lets us understand when the heavyweight finally snaps.
🎯 A teaspoon of neutron star stuff weighs about 10 billion tons—roughly a miniature Mount Everest.
🎬 The concept of neutron stars inspired science fiction writer Robert Forward to write 'Dragon's Egg,' in which exotic life evolves on such an object.