Gluttonous Cosmic ‘Black Widow’ Is Heaviest-Known Neutron Star

Gluttonous Cosmic ‘Black Widow’ Is Heaviest-Known Neutron Star
A spinning neutron star periodically swings its radio (green) and gamma-ray (magenta) beams past Earth in this artist's concept of a black widow pulsar. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Handout via Reuters
Reuters
Updated:

WASHINGTON—Astronomers have observed the most massive known example of an object called a neutron star, one classified as a “black widow” that got particularly hefty by gobbling up most of the mass of a stellar companion trapped in an unhappy cosmic marriage.

The researchers said the neutron star, wildly spinning at 707 times per second, has a mass about 2.35 times greater than that of our sun, putting it perhaps at the maximum possible mass for such objects before they would collapse to form a black hole.