Colliding stars found that could reveal one of universe's most fundamental mysteries
Scientists have found a strange "pulsar" deep in space that could solve some of the universe's most fundamental mysteries.
The discovery could help us understand how dead stars collide and the universe's expansion, according to the researchers who found it.
The pulsar – a neutron star "lighthouse" deep in space that sends out blasts of radio energy as it spins around – is locked in a tight orbit with another star.
Eventually, the two stars will collide, sending out energy in gravitational waves that will disturb spacetime in ways that can be detected across the universe.
Scientists have found such pulsars, and dead neutron stars locked in binary systems, before. But the newly discovered object is the first time that a pulsar has been found in such a strange relationship, with one of the pair far larger than the other.
It's that unusual difference that scientists hope can be used to provide important clues about some of the deepest, unsolved mysteries of the universe.
Those include a better estimate of the Hubble constant, or the rate of expansion of the universe.
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