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Neutron stars

A star powered by magnetism

Nature volume 393, pages 215–216 (1998)Cite this article

Ever since their discovery three decades ago, neutron stars have fascinated astronomers. They have extreme properties in almost all respects: they are the densest objects in the Universe, the most rapidly rotating, and the best astronomical laboratory for condensed-matter physics. To this, Kouveliotou et al. (page 235of this issue1) add direct evidence of magnetic fields strong enough to perturb the very structure of the vacuum.

First a bit of background. Pulsars — pulsating radio sources — are the most common manifestation of neutron stars. When they are born in supernova explosions, pulsars are believed to be rotating rapidly, with periods of tens of milliseconds, and to have magnetic fields of about 1012-13 gauss (108-9 tesla). The source of energy for the emissions from a pulsar is its rotation: the rapid rotation and the magnetic field combine to generate particles moving at nearly the speed of light, which in turn emit the observed very bright radio waves and high-energy photons. Neutron stars with weaker magnetic fields, 109 gauss or even lower, manifest themselves as millisecond pulsars and as accreting X-ray binaries.

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Figure 1: Radio image of the supernova remnant G10.0-0.3 at 1.4 GHz.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy, Caltech, Pasadena, 91125, California, USA

    S. R. Kulkarni

  2. The Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 27599-3255, North Carolina, USA

    Christopher Thompson

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  1. S. R. Kulkarni
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Kulkarni, S., Thompson, C. A star powered by magnetism. Nature 393, 215–216 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/30357

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