Its companion white dwarf star is only slightly less exotic it is the glowing remains of a much lighter star that has lost its atmosphere and is slowly cooling. The gravity at its surface is more than 300 billion times stronger than that on Earth and at its centre every sugar-cubed-sized volume has more than one billion tonnes of matter squeezed into it. It is twice as heavy as the Sun, but just 20 kilometres across. This pulsar is named PSR J0348+0432 and is the remains of a supernova explosion. Although this unusual pair is very interesting in its own right it is also a unique laboratory for testing the limits of physical theories. The neutron star is a pulsar that is giving off radio waves that can be picked up on Earth by radio telescopes. An international team has discovered an exotic double object that consists of a tiny, but unusually heavy neutron star that spins 25 times each second, orbited every two and a half hours by a white dwarf star.
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