.jpg)
Using the Green Bank Telescope, the world’s largest fully
steerable radio telescope, Kaplan et al. (2014) made observations of the pulsar
PSR J2222-0137 and its invisible companion. A pulsar is basically a neutron
star, an ultra-dense remnant core of a massive star. The observations show that
PSR J2222-0137 is 1.20 ± 0.14 times the Sun’s mass and its invisible companion
is 1.05 ± 0.06 times the Sun’s mass. Both objects circle around each other with
an orbital period of 2.45 days. The pulsar’s invisible companion tugs at the
pulsar, allowing its presence to be inferred.
Based on its estimated mass, the pulsar’s invisible
companion is not massive enough to be a black hole. Furthermore, the
companion’s orbit is too circular for it to be another neutron star since
neutron stars form in violent supernova explosions that would leave behind a
system with a high orbital eccentricity. Despite deep optical and near-infrared
searches, the pulsar’s companion remains invisible. This suggests the companion
is probably a very old and very cool white dwarf with a surface temperature of
less than 3000K. With such a temperature, it would be far cooler than any known
white dwarf and would not be directly detectable. The invisible white dwarf companion
of PSR J2222-0137 may have cooled enough to have already crystallised and is
now in the faster Debye cooling regime. In this cooling regime, the crystal
lattice of the white dwarf causes coherent vibration which allows the white
dwarf to cool more rapidly.
Reference:
Kaplan et al. (2014), “A 1.05 M⊙ Companion
to PSR J2222-0137: The Coolest Known White Dwarf?”, arXiv:1406.0488
[astro-ph.SR]