Astronomers discover strange new cosmic body larger than some black holes in Milky way

Astronomers have discovered a new object in the Milky Way that is lighter than the lightest known black holes but heavier than the heaviest neutron stars.

It was discovered circling a millisecond pulsar 40,000 light years away by researchers in Manchester and Germany, according to BBC.

Pulsars that spin in milliseconds do so at hundreds of rotations per second.

Ben Stappers, an astrophysics professor at the University of Manchester and project head, described it as "exciting".

It may be the first detection of a radio pulsar-black hole binary, according to researchers from the University of Manchester and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn. Such a pairing might lead to fresh tests of Einstein's general relativity and provide new insights into the study of black holes.

Professor Stappers added: "A pulsar-black hole system will be an important target for testing theories of gravity and a heavy neutron star will provide new insights in nuclear physics at very high densities."

A neutron star, which is the extremely dense remnant of a dead star, will collapse if it gains too much mass.

There's a lot of conjecture about what they become after this, but one possibility is that they turn into black holes.