Binary pulsars

2 months ago
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#space #pulsar #astronomy #nasa #darkvoid
A pulsar (from the English acronym for pulsating star) is a neutron star that rotates very quickly and is highly magnetized. The emission that we detect on Earth from pulsars is periodic, with short and regular emission intervals. The radiation is produced at the magnetic poles, from where it emanates in very thin beams. Because the radiation beams are misaligned with the axis of rotation, a fixed point in space will be briefly illuminated by the radiation beam only once per spin of the star (as occurs with a lighthouse).

Neutron stars can spin up to several hundred times per second; a point on its surface may be moving at speeds of up to 70,000 km/s. In fact, neutron stars that rotate so quickly expand at their equator due to this dizzying speed. This also implies that these stars are a few thousand meters in size, between 10 and 20 kilometers, since the centrifugal force generated at this speed is enormous and only the powerful gravitational field of one of these stars (given its enormous density) is capable of preventing it from falling apart.

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