Astronomers have just announced an exciting discovery — a brand-new black widow pulsar, named PSR J1544-2555.

But what does that mean?
Black widow pulsars are a special type of millisecond pulsar — neutron stars that spin incredibly fast and slowly destroy their companion stars with intense radiation.

This newly found pulsar rotates once every 2.39 milliseconds — that’s over 400 times every second! Its companion star is tiny, only about 0.095 times the mass of our Sun. Together, they orbit each other in just 2.7 hours. Imagine — in the time of a normal workday, they circle each other almost nine times.

The system is located about 6,500 light years away and emits not just radio waves, but also intense gamma rays with a luminosity of around 4 decillion ergs per second. That’s an almost unimaginable amount of energy.

Astronomers say this discovery highlights how powerful the Fermi-LAT catalog is for finding new pulsars and shows the value of combining optical and radio surveys.

In short, what we’re seeing here is a true cosmic predator — a neutron star slowly consuming its companion. And it’s just one of many extreme systems still hiding in our galaxy.