Endless Facts, One Snippet at a Time
Pulsars: Spinning Lighthouses of Space
- Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars, the dense remnants of massive star explosions.
- They emit beams of radio waves, light, or X-rays that sweep across space like cosmic lighthouses.
- Some pulsars spin hundreds of times per second, earning the name millisecond pulsars.
- The first pulsar was discovered in 1967 by Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish.
- Pulsars are so precise that their pulses rival atomic clocks in accuracy.
- They can help astronomers test Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
- Binary pulsars, orbiting with another star, provide key insights into gravitational waves.
- Pulsars form when a massive star collapses into an ultra-dense core after a supernova.
- Despite being only about 20 kilometers wide, pulsars can contain more mass than the Sun.
- NASA has even used pulsar signals for spacecraft navigation, like a natural cosmic GPS.