Tuhin Malik

Neutron stars are the final chord in the evolution of massive suns. Born in the cataclysm of a supernova, they pack a mass comparable to the Sun's into a sphere the size of an earthly metropolis.

The mystery of dark matter, the invisible skeleton of the cosmos, has haunted us since Fritz Zwicky first suspected it in galaxy clusters.

Neutron stars — remnants of supernovae — are among the densest objects in the Universe. Their central density exceeds nuclear density many times over, and gravity is surpassed only by black holes.

A neutron star is a city the size of Manhattan that weighs as much as half a million Earths. A teaspoon of its material would outweigh Mount Everest. Now, into this superdense sphere, something invisible and elusive has been mixed — dark matter particles. That's exactly what physicists did in a new study.