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When a star with a mass of roughly ten solar masses finishes its life, it does so in a spectacular explosion known as a supernova, leaving behind as remnant "ash" a neutron star. Neutron stars have masses of one-to-several Suns, but they are tiny in size, only tens of kilometers. Neutron stars spin rapidly, and when they have associated rotating magnetic fields to constrain charged particles, these particles emit electromagnetic radiation in a lighthouse-like beam that can sweep past the Earth with great regularity every few seconds or less. Such neutron stars are known as pulsars. Pulsars are dramatic and powerful probes of supernovae, their progenitor stars, and the properties of nuclear matter under the extreme conditions that exist in these stars.
Some pulsars called millisecond pulsars spin much more quickly, and astronomers have concluded that in order to rotate so rapidly these objects must be regularly accreting material from a nearly companion star which in a binary orbit with it; the new material helps to spin-up the neutron star, which normally would gradually slow down. There are more than 200 known millisecond pulsars. An understanding of these pulsars has been hampered, however, by the fact that only about a dozen of them have had their companion stars directly detected and studied.
CfA (Centre for Astrophysics) astronomers Maureen van den Berg, Josh Grindlay, and Peter Edmonds and their colleagues used ultraviolet images from Hubble to identify the companion stars to two pulsar companions.
(Score: 4, Informative) by mhajicek on Wednesday September 30 2015, @02:14AM
Hey, all ya gotta do for that is look at humans.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Wednesday September 30 2015, @06:00AM
Waste of space? We only have to quote Giordano Bruno from the reboot of Cosmos to refute this. You space (or god) is too small. Just imagine if a supernova were to occur anywhere near our home planet. Maybe it has, in the past. The far, far, distant past. Some of these are known to send out polarized bursts of gamma radiation, which like a massive laser, could cross vast distances of space, frying whatever they encounter. It could be us. So, it is good that space is so big? We could quote "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", but I think the point is made. The only reason we are here to observe such fascinating things as quasars is because there is a big waste of space between us and them. So, be grateful that we have been spared, so far. . . .