Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 355, Issue 6327, Pages 817-819Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.aai8635
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Funding
- European Union's (EU) Seventh Framework Programme [607452]
- ESA member states
- NASA
- ASI-INAF [NuSTAR I/037/12/0]
- Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) Vidi award [A.2320.0076]
- EU's Horizon Framework Programme for Research and Innovation under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant [660657-TMSP-H2020-MSCA-IF-2014]
- UK Space Agency [ST/J004669/1] Funding Source: researchfish
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Ultraluminous x-ray sources (ULXs) in nearby galaxies shine brighter than any x-ray source in our Galaxy. ULXs are usually modeled as stellar-mass black holes (BHs) accreting at very high rates or intermediate-mass BHs. We present observations showing that NGC 5907 ULX is instead an x-ray accreting neutron star (NS) with a spin period evolving from 1.43 seconds in 2003 to 1.13 seconds in 2014. It has an isotropic peak luminosity of similar to 1000 times the Eddington limit for a NS at 17.1 megaparsec. Standard accretion models fail to explain its luminosity, even assuming beamed emission, but a strong multipolar magnetic field can describe its properties. These findings suggest that other extreme ULXs (x-ray luminosity >= 1041 erg second(-1)) might harbor NSs.
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