Scientists from Germany and Brazil are investigating a “wandering corpse” in the supernova remnant HESS J1731-347, located 8,150 light-years from Earth, yet they are unable to determine what it is.
According to Science Alert, it is certainly the “remains” of a star but has evolved in a way never seen before.
The mysterious cosmic “remains” are named XMMU J173203.3-344518, described as “quirky” in research conducted by the University of São Paulo and the Federal University of ABC (Brazil). It has a mass of about 3/4 that of the Sun but could fit comfortably within Manhattan (New York, USA).
It is strangely dense, but “not in the way you think,” researchers describe.
A hypothetical “strange star” that has actually emerged in the universe? – (Photo: El Fronterizo).
Last year, this “remains” was studied by researchers from the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Tübingen (Germany), confirming its distance of 8,150 light-years away and identifying it as a “remains” of a star in the supernova HESS J1731-347.
It exhibits characteristics of a neutron star and should have been a neutron star.
Neutron stars are the “monstrous remains” of giant stars that have exhausted their fuel. At this point, the star’s own gravitational force crushes the remains, collapsing into a dense, small object called a neutron star.
Neutron stars are incredibly dense and heavy because their atoms are tightly packed. Deep within their core, electrons are forced into the nucleus, causing protons to lose their charge and transform into neutrons. If the mass is sufficient, it will collapse again into a black hole.
The mass limit for a neutron star is just slightly more than that of our Sun, with the previous record being 1.17 solar masses.
However, the recently identified object has only 77% of the Sun’s mass. It is also not a white dwarf—the “remains” of lighter stars—and it cannot be a neutron star.
The new investigation examines its mass, radius, and even surface temperature, suggesting that it represents the so-called “strange star,” primarily composed of strange quarks, a hypothetical object in astronomy.
Strange quarks are a type of fundamental particle that can group in threes to form baryons like protons or neutrons. However, under certain conditions, including sufficiently high pressure, they can appear in a hypothesized form known as quark matter.
Scientists have yet to explain what could create a “strange star” during the death of another star. Nevertheless, this indicates that this strange stellar “remains” deserves the astronomical community’s focused observation.
