An international research team led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences has made a breakthrough discovery using China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), along with South Africa's MeerKAT and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT). For the first time, scientists have directly identified a pulsar — a rapidly spinning neutron star — in the tidal tail of an ancient open star cluster being torn apart by the Milky Way's gravity.
The team targeted NGC 6791, one of the oldest and most massive open clusters in the Milky Way at approximately 8 billion years old. FAST detected an isolated pulsar with a rotation period of about 1.9 seconds, designated PSR J1921+3745. MeerKAT then pinpointed its position to sub-arcsecond precision, while CFHT provided detailed optical mapping of the cluster's outer stellar distribution.
The discovery provides crucial observational evidence for how neutron stars with low "kick velocities" escape their birth clusters and gradually merge into the Milky Way's disk. This solves a long-standing puzzle about the origins of the large population of neutron stars found in the galactic disk. China's growing capabilities in space have been expanding rapidly, with the successful recovery of its Long March 10B reusable rocket booster marking a major step toward challenging SpaceX in the commercial launch market. The country's broader push to lead in both AI and space includes ambitious plans to equip satellites with AI capabilities for autonomous decision-making.