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Astronomy

Life beyond the pulsar death valley

Nature volume 400, pages 812–813 (1999)Cite this article

Rapidly spinning, strongly magnetized neutron stars, which reveal themselves to astronomers as radio pulsars1, have been known for more than 30 years. Yet despite a steady progress in our understanding of the physics of these fascinating objects, to paraphrase a quote from a 1976 conversation between Sandra Faber and Jonathan Arons2, “we know how pulsars pulse, but we do not know how they shine”. This disappointing state of affairs is heightened by the astonishing discovery of the slowest radio pulsar detected so far, reported on page 848 of this issue3. The 8.5-second rotation period of pulsar J2144-3933 is so long that, according to our current thinking about the ways pulsars shine, this one should not exist as an observable object.

The key to producing pulses is the rotation of the neutron stars, which have masses similar to the Sun's but diameters of only 20 km or less. Pulsars expend their rotational kinetic energy by emitting electromagnetic radiation and a wind of relativistic particles, leading inevitably to a gradual slow-down of pulsar rotation. Luckily, this slow-down is measurable and, together with the rotation period itself, gives a useful estimate of a pulsar's magnetic field strength and age. Only a small fraction of the total energy lost is radiated away in the form of beamed radio emission, which appears to originate well inside the pulsar magnetospheres, in the regions located just over the magnetic poles. Pulsars are best described as ‘misaligned’ rotating magnets in which the magnetic poles do not coincide with the poles of rotation, so that the spinning pulsar produces a series of evenly spaced pulses. The pulses themselves are beams of radio waves emitted along the magnetic axis of a predominantly dipolar, huge (∼ 1012 Gauss) magnetic field.

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Figure 1: Life and death of a radio pulsar.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, 525 Davey Laboratory, University Park, 16802, Pennsylvania, USA

    Alex Wolszczan

  2. Centre for Astronomy, Nicolaus Copernicus University, ul, Gagarina 11, 87-100, Torun, Poland

    Alex Wolszczan

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  1. Alex Wolszczan
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Wolszczan, A. Life beyond the pulsar death valley. Nature 400, 812–813 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/23576

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