Reuters posted 14 hours ago | 0 comments

Astronomers baffled by weird, fast-spinning pulsar

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Astronomers are baffled after finding an exotic type of star called a pulsar apparently locked in an elongated orbit around a star much like the sun -- an arrangement defying what had been known about such objects.

The rapidly spinning pulsar -- an extraordinarily dense object created when a massive star exploded as a supernova -- is called J1903+0327 and is located about 21,000 light years from Earth, the astronomers said.

A light year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year.... [more]