Pulsars: Spinning Lighthouses of Space

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