New study explains why a physics-defying space object hasn't exploded yet

Astronomers from across the world have been left scratching their heads trying to explain the existence of a mysterious celestial phenomenon that science says shouldn’t even exist. 

In a galaxy not too far from our own lives a pulsating neutron star that’s ten million times brighter than our sun and also defies the laws of physics according to Business Insider. 

The reason why this weird star has astronomers baffled has to do with its extraordinary level of brightness and a pesky little rule of astrophysics known as the Eddington Limit. 

According to Oxford’s Garret Cotter, the Eddington Limit was first introduced as a way to explain massive stars and it dictates that celestial objects have a maximum luminosity. 

The theory hypothesizes that objects in space can only get so bright before the radiation pressure produced by that object’s luminosity begins to overpower its gravitational pull. 

Once an object reaches its brightness tipping point the material around it will start to be forced away from it rather than pulled inward. But there’s a big problem with this thesis. 

Astronomers have known for decades there were things in space that didn’t adhere to the Eddington Limit, and NASA has labeled these objects ultraluminous x-ray sources. 

“Since the 1970s, astronomers have been detecting these bright signatures,” Business Insider’s Jessica Orwig wrote in 2014 when a particularly brilliant ultraluminous x-ray source was found 12 million light years from Earth in the nearby Messier 82 galaxy. 

“In fact, this pulsar is 10 times brighter than any other pulsar ever observed in the universe and shines with the intensity of 10 million suns,” Orwig added in order to explain the true scale of the find to an audience that might have missed its significance. 

The ultra-bright pulsating neutron star was later given the name M82 X-2 and its origins remained a mystery to us until earlier this April when a group of researchers published a groundbreaking study confirming the star was as bright as astronomers had predicted. 

Using NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), the researchers were able to gather what a statement from NASA called “a first-of-its-kind measurement” that showed M82 X-2 broke the Eddington Limit, and with it, our understanding of physics. 

M82 X-2 is apparently stealing 9 trillion tons of material a year from a neighboring star according to the researchers, which is what’s causing the neutron star to burn brighter than anything in the universe. 

"This is the beauty of astronomy. Observing the sky, we expand our ability to investigate how the universe works,” the study’s author Matteo Bachetti said in NASA’s statement. 

Bachetti is an astrophysicist with the National Institute of Astrophysics' Calegari Observatory, and along with his co-authors, presented evidence in their study that could explain why M82 X-2 can burn so brightly without being subject to the rules of the Eddington Limit. 

According to the study’s authors, their findings support the theory that strong magnetic fields produced by neutron stars could be making it more difficult for atoms to escape M82 X-2’s gravitational pull, which in turn theoretically increases the star's maximum brightness. 

Unfortunately, there are no experiments that can be performed to confirm that magnetic fields are allowing some ultraluminous x-ray sources to surpass the Eddington Limit according to Bachetti, who said in a NASA statement: "We have to wait for the universe to show us its secrets.”