A dwarf star's giant mass twists the fabric of space and time
A dwarf star's giant mass twists the fabric of space and time

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA — In a new study published in Science, astronomer writes that a dwarf star in the Musca constellation has so much mass that it measurably distorts space and time.

According to OzGrav, the dwarf star's stellar companion, an exotic pulsar, courses around the bigger star in a speedy five-hour orbit.

Space.com reports that the white dwarf is the size of the Earth, but according to OzGrav, the star's mass and density is hundreds of thousands of times greater than our planet.

According to Space.com, the pulsar is the corpse of a star that had gone supernova and the dead star crushes protons and electrons to emit neutrons.

The white dwarf's powerful gravity and rapid spin cause frame-dragging, or distortions in space-time.

Frame-dragging imparts a wobbling effect on the pulsar and makes the neutron star twirl on its axis about 30 times an hour.

The drift in the pulsar's orbit is then picked up by Australia's telescopes, including Parkes, which allowed astrophysicists to corroborate Einstein 's theory of general relativity.