{"id":7216,"date":"2026-07-26T12:21:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T12:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/researchtoday.co.za\/?p=7216"},"modified":"2026-07-26T12:22:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T12:22:15","slug":"south-africas-meerkat-heard-a-neutron-star-astronomers-thought-was-silent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/researchtoday.co.za\/?p=7216","title":{"rendered":"South Africa\u2019s MeerKAT Heard a Neutron Star Astronomers Thought Was Silent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For decades, astronomers had listened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nothing came back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A peculiar class of young neutron stars known as <strong>central compact objects<\/strong> could be seen glowing brightly in X-rays inside the remains of exploded stars, yet repeated searches failed to find the regular radio pulses normally associated with pulsars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That silence helped build a scientific assumption: perhaps these neutron stars simply did not produce radio emission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">South Africa&#8217;s MeerKAT telescope has now found one that does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">An international team detected faint, repeating radio pulses from the neutron star <strong>1E 1207.4\u22125209<\/strong>, overturning the idea that central compact objects are necessarily radio-silent and suggesting that astronomers may have been overlooking a population of unusually quiet young pulsars. The study was published in <em>Nature Astronomy<\/em> on 25 June 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The signal repeats roughly every <strong>424 milliseconds<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That is the same rotation period previously measured from the star&#8217;s X-rays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The object had been pulsing all along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Astronomers simply needed an instrument sensitive enough to hear it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The remains of a dead star<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Neutron stars form when sufficiently massive stars reach the end of their lives and collapse during a supernova.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What remains is extraordinary: roughly a star&#8217;s worth of matter compressed into an object only tens of kilometres across.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Many neutron stars become pulsars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Their magnetic fields channel radiation into beams that sweep through space as the star rotates. When one of those beams repeatedly crosses Earth, radio telescopes detect a remarkably regular pulse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Central compact objects have been difficult to place within that picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They sit near the centres of young supernova remnants, making their youth obvious, and emit thermal X-rays. Yet major radio searches had repeatedly failed to detect them. Their magnetic fields also appear unusually weak compared with many young pulsars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That created a puzzle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Were they a fundamentally different kind of neutron star?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Or were they ordinary pulsars behaving in an unusual way?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">MeerKAT has provided the strongest evidence yet for the second possibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Finding an extraordinarily faint pulse<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The researchers used MeerKAT to conduct deep observations of several central compact objects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During a four-hour observation on 5 January 2024, 60 MeerKAT dishes observed 1E 1207.4\u22125209 at radio frequencies between 544 and 1,088 MHz. Further observations followed in October 2025 using both MeerKAT&#8217;s UHF and L-band receivers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The team then searched the data for repeating signals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A faint pulse appeared at precisely the expected rotation period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Polarisation measurements provided another important piece of evidence. They indicated that Earth&#8217;s line of sight passes relatively close to the neutron star&#8217;s magnetic pole. That makes it less likely that astronomers had previously missed the signal simply because its radio beam pointed elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The star really is extremely faint at radio wavelengths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That helps explain why previous telescopes failed to detect it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A young star that can look incredibly old<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The discovery also exposes an unusual problem in how astronomers estimate the ages of pulsars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A pulsar gradually slows as it rotates. Astronomers can use its current rotation and the rate at which that rotation is slowing to calculate a characteristic age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For ordinary pulsars, that estimate can provide useful information about their evolutionary stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This object breaks the neat relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It sits inside a young supernova remnant, yet its weak magnetic field and slow rate of rotational change could make it appear <strong>billions of years old<\/strong> if astronomers discovered it after the surrounding remnant had faded away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A genuinely young neutron star could therefore be hiding in a catalogue among apparently ancient pulsars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And if one exists, others may too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The authors argue that the extreme faintness of central compact objects could help explain another astronomical mystery: why many known supernova remnants contain no detectable radio pulsar at their centres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some may not be empty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Their pulsars may simply be whispering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Did the star recently switch on?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is still an unresolved possibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">1E 1207.4\u22125209 experienced an unusual rotational <strong>glitch<\/strong> around 2015 \u2014 a sudden small change in the way the neutron star spins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Researchers have raised the possibility that this event changed the star&#8217;s magnetosphere and either activated or strengthened its radio emission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At present, that remains a hypothesis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are no sufficiently sensitive radio observations from before the glitch capable of demonstrating whether the star was already transmitting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Continued monitoring will be needed to determine whether central compact objects are permanently faint radio pulsars or whether their emission can change during their evolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A discovery made possible in South Africa<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is a particularly direct South African connection to this result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">MeerKAT is operated by the <strong>South African Radio Astronomy Observatory<\/strong>, a facility of the National Research Foundation under the Department of Science and Innovation. South African astronomer Fernando Camilo of SARAO was also part of the international research team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The discovery illustrates what extreme telescope sensitivity can change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For years, the absence of a detectable signal helped shape the scientific model of an entire class of neutron stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">MeerKAT did not find a louder universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It listened more carefully to the one that was already there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And in doing so, it revealed that some supposedly silent stars may simply be much harder to hear than astronomers realised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Source Information<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Study Title:<\/strong> <em>Pulsed radio emission from a central compact object<\/em><br><strong>Authors:<\/strong> Lei Zhang, Alessandro Ridolfi, Di Li, Erbil G\u00fcgercino\u011flu, Fernando Camilo, Wynn C. G. Ho, Matthew Bailes, Ping Zhou, Craig O. Heinke and Marcus E. Lower<br><strong>Journal:<\/strong> <em>Nature Astronomy<\/em><br><strong>Published:<\/strong> 25 June 2026<br><strong>DOI:<\/strong> 10.1038\/s41550-026-02899-2<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South Africa&#8217;s MeerKAT telescope has detected radio pulses from a young neutron star belonging to a class long considered radio-silent, suggesting astronomers may be overlooking a hidden population of extremely faint young pulsars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7217,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[29],"class_list":["post-7216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","tag-trending"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>South Africa\u2019s MeerKAT Heard a Neutron Star Astronomers Thought Was Silent - 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