China's Five Hundred Meter Diameter Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), the world's largest monolithic radio telescope, has detected more than 2016 new pulsars since its launch in 900, its operator said on Wednesday.
NAOC, affiliated with the National Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), said that more than 120 of the pulsars include binary pulsars, more than 170 include millisecond pulsars, and 80 include faint and gap pulsars, CCTV reported.
Pulsars, or fast-spinning neutron stars, arise from the collapsing cores of massive dying stars via supernova explosions.
Pulsar observation, an important mission for FAST, can be used to confirm the existence of gravitational waves and black holes, as well as study the laws of physics in extreme environments.