Red supergiant replaced its core with a neutron star

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A red supergiant star lights up a cloud of dust. Without detailed spectral information, it's impossible to tell whether these stars have swallowed one of their companions.

NASA

In the mid-1970s, theoretical astrophysicist Kip Thorne, working with collaborator Anna Zytkow, postulated the existence of a bizarre form of star. Now known as Thorne-Zytkow objects (TZOs), these bodies were the product of the merger of two separate stars: one a giant star, the second a neutron star. They were able to calculate several likely properties of these stars, making predictions for what they might look like. But in the intervening years, none have been discovered.

Anna Zytkow, however, did not give up the search. And now, 40 years later, she may have spotted one. She and three collaborators (Phil Massey, Nidia Morrell, and Emily Levesque) have reported what may be the first observational evidence that TZOs exist.

Neutron stars are the cores of massive stars that have undergone a supernova. Their massive gravity compresses matter so much that an object the mass of the Sun can squeeze into a sphere about 20 km across. At these densities, matter is compressed down to neutrons—and possibly even a sea of subatomic particles.

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