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Are we finally uncovering hidden pulsars at the center of the Milky Way?
Join host Beth Johnson and William J. Welch Postdoctoral Fellow Karen Perez for a deep dive into a newly announced discovery of a possible pulsar near our galaxy’s core. Using data from the Breakthrough Listen Deep Pulsar Survey and observations with the NSF Green Bank Telescope, researchers are probing one of the most extreme and mysterious regions in the Milky Way.
The Galactic Center is a chaotic environment dominated by the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. For decades, astronomers have predicted that many pulsars should orbit this region — yet very few have been detected. Why are they so hard to find? And what would discovering more of them mean for testing gravity, mapping the Galactic Center, and understanding extreme astrophysics?
In this episode, we’ll explore:
- What makes pulsars such powerful cosmic tools
- Why the Galactic Center is both promising and frustrating for detection
- How Breakthrough Listen’s deep radio surveys are helping uncover hidden objects
- What this possible new pulsar could reveal about our galaxy’s most extreme environment
If confirmed, this discovery could open a new window into the study of gravity, black holes, and the dense stellar populations at the heart of the Milky Way.
Join us live and bring your questions!
Press release: https://news.columbia.edu/news/researchers-announce-discovery-possible-pulsar-milky-ways-center
Paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae336c
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