In the neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, lives the binary system A0538-66. There, a neutron star — a tiny sphere the size of a city but heavier than the Sun — spins on its axis every 69 milliseconds. For comparison, a kitchen blender makes one turn in about 10 milliseconds, so the star is almost as fast a spinner.
The pair's orbit is highly elongated, like a comet's around the Sun: sometimes the star swoops close to its neighbor, sometimes it swings far away. A full circuit takes 16.6 days. Radio telescopes ASKAP and MeerKAT have for the first time caught radio waves from it. The luminosity turned out to be enormous — about 3×10²² erg per second per hertz. In everyday terms: it's as if a tiny radio transmitter the size of a pea were blasting louder than all the radio stations on Earth combined.
Why this happens remains a puzzle. Perhaps matter from the companion star falls onto the neutron star and swirls around it like water down a drain. This infall heats everything up and produces radio waves. Other similar systems sometimes behave this way, but A0538-66 has turned out to be a record holder in brightness. Now astronomers will keep an eye on it every week to understand how this 'radio beacon' works.
The neutron star in A0538-66 makes 14 turns per second. If a person could spin that fast, their hand would move faster than the speed of sound.
In the series 'The Expanse', neutron stars are used as navigation beacons — A0538-66 could well serve as such a landmark.