Astronomers have discovered that a unique pulsar originated from a strange quark star

Pulsars are highly magnetized rotating neutron stars that emit a beam of electromagnetic energy.

radiation.The fastest spinning pulsars with a rotation period of less than 30 milliseconds are known as millisecond pulsars (MSP). Astronomers speculate that they form in binary systems, when an initially more massive component becomes a neutron star, which then spins up due to the accretion of material from the secondary star.

PSR J1946 + 3417 is a unique MSP (eMSP)with a rotation period of 3.17 ms. It consists of a neutron star (80% heavier than the Sun) and a white dwarf (0.266 times the mass of the Sun). The system has an orbital period of about 27 days and an orbital eccentricity of 0.134.

Such a high eccentricity PSR J1946+3417challenges current theories of MSP education. That's why a team of astronomers led by Long Jiang of the Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory in China conducted simulations to find the most plausible scenario that could explain the origin of this object.

The team managed to simulate the evolutionthe progenitor PSR J1946 + 3417. According to their model, the neutron star had an initial mass of about 1.4 solar masses, and its companion was 60% heavier than it. The binary system with an initial orbital period of about 2.59 days has turned into a double X-ray system with a low mass.

Based on the data obtained, astronomerssuggest that the formation and evolution of PSR J1946+3417 can be explained by a phase transition from a neutron star to a strange star (SS). A strange star is a quark star made of strange quark matter. Strange matter or strange quark matter is quark matter containing strange quarks. In nature, the strange substance hypothetically occurs in the core of neutron stars.

The authors of the article concluded that the phase transition hypothesis is the most plausible, which will explain the current properties of PSR J1946 + 3417.

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Accretion is the process of increasing the mass of a celestial body by the gravitational attraction of matter onto it from the surrounding space.

Orbital eccentricity - numerical characteristicthe orbit of a celestial body, which characterizes the "compression" of the orbit. In the general case, the orbit of a celestial body is a conical section, and the eccentricity of the orbit is the eccentricity of the corresponding curve.