Something is ‘ticking’ near the milky way’s supermassive black hole

Pulsar Vela – Image via NASA

doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ae336c
Credibility: 989
#Pulsar

At the heart of our galaxy, the Milky Way, lies a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A”, with a mass equivalent to about four million times that of the Sun

This central region is extremely chaotic and teeming with stars, gases, and intense gravitational forces.

Now, astronomers have announced an intriguing discovery: they have detected a signal that appears to come from an object spinning at an impressive speed, very close to this black hole.

It is a possible millisecond pulsar, a type of superdense neutron star remnant of the explosion of a very large star.

These pulsars spin so fast that they emit beams of radio waves like cosmic lighthouses.

In the case of this object, it completes a revolution every 8.19 milliseconds-that is, it “rings” like an extremely precise clock more than 120 times per second.

Researchers at Columbia University, in partnership with the Breakthrough Listen project, made this detection during one of the most sensitive searches ever conducted for radio signals in the galactic center.

The region is difficult to observe due to the large amount of interference and dust, but the signal appeared promising and regular.

What makes this discovery so special is its location: the pulsar (if confirmed) is very close to the supermassive black hole.

Ordinary pulsars already function as incredibly precise cosmic clocks, but a pulsar orbiting or very close to a giant black hole could reveal new information about gravity and the very structure of spacetime.

According to Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, the strong gravity near a black hole curves space and alters time.

This would cause the pulsar’s “ticks” to reach us with small, predictable variations or delays.

By measuring these changes with great precision, scientists could test Einstein’s theory in an environment of extreme gravity, something that has not yet been done so directly near a supermassive black hole.

For now, the object is only a “candidate”-astronomers need more observations to confirm whether the signal really comes from a pulsar and not from another source.

Meanwhile, all the collected data is being made publicly available so that other scientists around the world can analyze it and contribute to the investigation.

If confirmed, this “cosmic clock” near Sagittarius A” could open a new window to a better understanding of how gravity works in the most extreme conditions of the universe-and, incidentally, reveal more secrets about the center of our own galaxy.

Published in 02/23/2026 00h59

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Text adapted by AI (Grok) and translated via Google API in the English version. Images from public image libraries or credits in the caption. Information about DOI, author and institution can be found in the body of the article.

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