A New Star on the Horizon: Intern Discovers Unknown Pulsar
A U.S. Naval Research Laboratory intern discovered a millisecond pulsar in the Glimpse-CO1 cluster using the Very Large Array, highlighting pulsars’ role as celestial timekeepers…
Pulsars News
Pulsars are highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars that emit beams of electromagnetic radiation from their magnetic poles. As pulsars rotate, these beams sweep through space, and if aligned with Earth, can be detected as pulses of radiation, hence the name “pulsar.” These cosmic lighthouses are formed from the remnants of massive stars that have exploded in supernovae, leaving behind incredibly dense cores. Pulsars are known for their extraordinarily regular rotation rates, with periods ranging from milliseconds to seconds. The precision of their pulsing has been likened to atomic clocks, making them valuable tools for astronomers. They are used to study phenomena such as gravitational waves, the interstellar medium, and general relativity. The discovery of the first pulsar in 1967 by Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish marked a significant milestone in astrophysics, providing the first indirect evidence for the existence of neutron stars.
Quantum Vortex Mystery: Unveiling the Twisted Roots of Neutron Stars’ Puzzling Pulses
A recent study has unveiled the origins of the mysterious “heartbeats” observed in neutron stars, relating them to glitches caused by the dynamics of superfluid…
Unlocking the Universe’s Deepest Rhythms With Gravitational Waves
Lowest-ever frequency gravitational waves spotted in pulsar data. A team of physicists has developed a method to detect gravity waves with such low frequencies that…
Astrophysics in Crisis? Mystery Object Discovered That Could Change Everything
Astronomers discover a celestial object that defies classification, possibly uncovering a new type of cosmic entity at the edge of known physics. Sometimes astronomers come…
Gamma Ray Breakthrough: Pulsars Propel Astrophysics Into a New Era
The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), in conjunction with the international Fermi Large Area Telescope Collaboration, has announced the discovery of almost 300 gamma ray…
Einstein’s Enigma: How a Mysterious Cosmic Object in Milky Way Could Test Relativity Like Never Before
Using the MeerKAT Telescope, astronomers found a mysterious object in the Milky Way’s black hole mass gap, challenging existing astronomical classifications and offering a unique…
The Cosmic Glow Hunt: Could Pulsar Light Reveal Dark Matter’s Mysteries?
The central question in the ongoing hunt for dark matter is: what is it made of? One possible answer is that dark matter consists of…
Cosmic Cannonballs: Unraveling the Mystery of a Pulsar’s Bizarre Brightness Shifts
An extensive astronomical study involving 12 telescopes both on the ground and in space, including three European Southern Observatory (ESO) facilities, astronomers have uncovered the…
Cosmic Enigma Solved? Extreme Stars May Hold the Key to Mysterious Radio Bursts
A universal relation for pulsars, magnetars, and potentially fast radio bursts. An international research team led by Michael Kramer and Kuo Liu from the Max…
10,000,000,000,000x the Energy of Visible Light: Pulsar’s Record-Breaking Gamma Rays Baffle Scientists
H.E.S.S. observatory records 20 tera-electronvolts photons from the Vela pulsar. Scientists using the H.E.S.S. observatory in Namibia have detected the highest energy gamma rays ever…
Mysterious Galactic Signals: Magnetar Observations Shed New Light on Fast Radio Bursts
An international team reports on a radio pulsar phase of a Galactic magnetar that emitted a fast radio burst in 2020; observations suggest unique origins…
Spider Pulsars’ Missing Link Found – Astronomers Validate Longstanding Theory
Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ National Astronomical Observatories (NAOC), along with their international partners, used the Five-hundred-meter Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) to identify…
Pulsar Mysteries Unveiled: Unprecedented “Dwarf” Pulses Discovered With FAST Telescope
Using the FAST telescope, researchers discovered unique “dwarf pulses” from pulsar PSR B2111+46, potentially unveiling unknown aspects of pulsar radiation and plasma conditions. Using the…
New White Dwarf Pulsar Discovery: “Stellar Fossils” Unveil Cosmic Secrets
A research group from the University of Warwick has discovered a rare white dwarf pulsar for only the second time, providing significant insights into stellar…
Why Have Pulsars “Gone Missing” – A New Finding Offers Some Answers
New finding offers clues to “missing” pulsars. MSPs, or millisecond pulsars, are evolved neutron stars with brief spin periods that underwent extensive mass transfer during…
Mysterious Interstellar Plasma Revealed by Twinkling Pulsars
Occasionally pulsars—rapidly-spinning remnants of stars that flash like a lighthouse—show extreme variations in brightness. Astrophysicists predict that these short bursts of brightness occur because dense…
Heaviest Neutron Star Ever Discovered Is a “Black Widow” Devouring Its Mate
Observations of faint, planet-size star help weigh its millisecond pulsar companion. A dense, collapsed star has shredded and consumed nearly the entire mass of its…
Undead Planets: The Bizarre Conditions of the First Exoplanet Detection
30 years ago, the first-ever exoplanets were discovered around a rapidly rotating star, called a pulsar. Now, astronomers have revealed that these planets may be…