'Unique' new telescope will explore mysteries

China plans to launch a world-leading X-ray space telescope by 2025 to study the universe's most extreme and mysterious events, such as black holes, gamma ray bursts and the merging of neutron stars, scientists said on Friday.

The telescope, named the "enhanced X-ray Timing and Polarimetry mission (eXTP)", will have "unique and unprecedented observing capabilities" for examining the extreme physics around black holes, or the interior of neutron stars - superdense remnants of massive stars, said Zhang Shuangnan, a researcher from the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

China launched its first X-ray space telescope - the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope, also known as "Insight" - in June. It helped scientists define the energy level of a newly discovered gravitational wave - tiny ripples in the fabric of space and time caused by violent cosmic events - in August.