Pulsar Launches ‘Clump’ as Heavy as Earth’s Oceans

A fast-moving pulsar appears to have punched a hole in a disk of gas around its companion star and to have launched a fragment of the disk outward at a speed of about 40 million miles per hour.

"As the pulsar moved through the disk, it appears that it punched a clump of material out and flung it away into space," says George Pavlov. NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

A fast-moving pulsar appears to have punched a hole in a disk of gas around its companion star and to have launched a fragment of the disk outward at a speed of about 40 million miles per hour.

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory is tracking this cosmic clump, which appears to be picking up speed as it moves out. The catapulted material weighs about as much as all the water in the Earth’s oceans.

The punch-out event happened in a double-star system that contains one star about 30 times as massive as the sun and another star that is a pulsar—an ultra-dense neutron star left behind after an even-more-massive star exploded as a supernova.

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