Mightiest Neutron Star yet ...


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Astronomers have discovered what they say is the mightiest neutron star yet.

The super-dense object, which lies some 3,000 light-years from Earth, is about twice as massive as our Sun.

That is 20% greater than the previous record holder, the US-Dutch team behind the observation tells the journal Nature.

Like all neutron stars, the object's matter is packed into an incredibly small space probably no bigger than the centre of a big city like London.

"The typical size of a neutron star is something like 10km in radius," said Dr Paul Demorest from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), Charlottesville, US.

"It's approximately the size of a city, which for an astronomical object is interesting because people can conceive of it pretty easily; and yet in that space it has the mass in this case about two times our Sun. So the size is easy to understand but the density is much more extreme than anything we know here on Earth," the study's lead author told BBC News.

The finding is important, says Dr Demorest's team, because it puts constraints on the type of exotic material that can form a neutron star.

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