“In my opinion, the most intriguing part of this study is the detection of an object in the ‘mass gap,’ which is a sort of no-man’s-land between the heaviest neutron star and lightest black hole masses we’ve measured,” Thankful Cromartie, an astrophysicist at the University of Virginia and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory who wasn’t involved with the new study, wrote in an email to Gizmodo. “Unfortunately, it’s impossible to say which it is, partially because the ‘tidal deformation,’ or neutron star stretching, that’s usually detectable in neutron star mergers is drowned out by this me...