Pulsars : Discovery News

High Winds Ravage British Radio Telescope

Posted Fri Feb 17, 2012 02:26 PM ET | 0

Volunteers are drafted in to repair extensive damage to the UK-based component of the LOFAR array. Read more

Fastest Stellar Spinner Will Die a Violent Death

Posted by Ian O'Neill Fri Nov 11, 2011 06:08 PM ET | 0

A star has been discovered with a record-breaking spin, but it will suffer one of the most violent explosions in the known universe. Read more

Fastest Stellar Spinner Will Die a Violent Death

From Stellar Corpses to Zombie Pulsars

Posted by Nicole Gugliucci Thu Nov 3, 2011 01:58 PM ET | 0

Pulsars are bizarre and unintuitive, and only seem to get weirder every time we look at them. Read more

This Diamond Planet Will Last Forever

Posted by Irene Klotz Thu Aug 25, 2011 02:00 PM ET | 0

Scientists have found a planet they believe to be a giant diamond. Read more

Star SOS Detected From Space

Posted by Irene Klotz Thu Jun 16, 2011 02:00 PM ET | 0

Astronomers pick up a mayday call from a star being ripped apart by a black hole 3.8 billion light-years from Earth. Read more

The Crab, the Pulsar and the Gamma-Ray 'Burp'

Posted by Nicole Gugliucci Thu Jan 20, 2011 04:49 AM ET | 0

Why is the pulsar at the center of the Crab Nebula acting so strange? Read more

How to Use a Pulsar to Find Starbucks

Posted Wed Nov 24, 2010 10:21 AM ET | 0

Cosmic GPS would employ pulsing stars, not satellites, as celestial beacons. Read more

New Neutron Star Largest Ever Discovered

Posted by Irene Klotz Wed Oct 27, 2010 01:30 PM ET | 0

Located about 3,000 light-years away, the neutron star also provides a very direct measure of Einstein's theory of general relativity. Read more

The Magnetar in Pulsar's Clothing

Posted by Nicole Gugliucci Wed Oct 20, 2010 03:45 AM ET | 0

New observations of a suspected magnetar suggest that it may have been masquerading as a "normal" pulsar. Read more

Distant Pulsars Used to Measure Jupiter

Posted by Nicole Gugliucci Thu Aug 26, 2010 12:32 PM ET | 0

How do you find out the mass of Jupiter? You could send a space probe there to study the distant world, but there's another way. Read more

X-Ray Pulsar Eclipse Reveals Neutron Star's Secrets

Posted by Nicole Gugliucci Thu Aug 19, 2010 04:32 AM ET | 0

What's in a neutron star? Well, neutrons, obviously. However, despite the deceptively simple label, the inner workings of neutron stars remain elusive. But that could soon change. Read more

X-Ray Pulsar Eclipse Reveals Neutron Star's Secrets

Pulsars: The Cosmic Timekeepers That Need Tweaking

Posted by Jennifer Ouellette Sun Jul 4, 2010 05:58 AM ET | 0

The universe has its own cosmic clocks: the spinning collapsed stars known as pulsars. But why are they ticking slightly out of step? Read more

Pulsars: The Cosmic Timekeepers That Need Tweaking

Are We Overlooking Alien Beacons?

Posted by Ray Villard Mon Jun 21, 2010 06:05 AM ET | 0

Despite our best search strategies, are signals from E.T. manifested in anomalous flashes of radio energy from our galaxy that are missed, or dismissed as natural phenomena? Read more

Shedding New Light on a Pulsar Mystery

Posted by Nicole Gugliucci Tue Apr 27, 2010 07:39 PM ET | 0

The fledgling Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) is teaming up with other radio telescopes to probe the beams of intense radiation emitted by pulsars, potentially answering the mystery as to how they are generated. Read more

Shimmer Me This

Posted by Jennifer Ouellette Tue Jan 5, 2010 03:08 PM ET | 0

Back in September, a fascinating paper appeared on the arXiv about a new way to search for gravitational waves. It's called the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), and it relies on how pulsars stretch and squeeze... Read more