A Newfound, Oddly Slow Pulsar Shouldn’t Emit Radio Waves
upstart writes:
The slowpoke pulsar sits in our galaxy, roughly 1,300 light-years away:
The newfound highly magnetic pulsar has a surprisingly long rotation period, which is challenging the theoretical understanding of these objects, researchers report May 30 in Nature Astronomy. Dubbed PSR J0901-4046, this pulsar sweeps its lighthouse-like radio beam past Earth about every 76 seconds - three times slower than the previous record holder.
[...] Further observations with MeerKAT revealed not only the pulsar's slow, steady radio beat - a measure of how fast it spins - but also another important detail: The rate at which the spin slows as the pulsar ages. And those two bits of info revealed something odd about this pulsar. According to theory, it should not be emitting radio waves. And yet, it is.
[...] A pulsar's rotation period and the slowdown of its spin relates to the strength of its magnetic field, which accelerates subatomic particles streaming from the star and, in turn, generates radio waves. Any neutron stars spinning as slowly as PSR J0901-4046 are in this stellar "graveyard" and shouldn't produce radio signals.
But "we just keep finding weirder and weirder pulsars that chip away at that understanding," says astrophysicist Maura McLaughlin of West Virginia University in Morgantown, who wasn't involved with this work.
[...] The astronomers also are altering their automated computer programs, which scan the radio data and flag intriguing signals, to look for these longer-duration spin periods - or even weirder and more mysterious neutron star phenomena. "The sweet thing about astronomy, for me, is what's out there waiting for us to find," Heywood says.
Journal Reference:
Caleb, M., Heywood, I., Rajwade, K. et al. Discovery of a radio-emitting neutron star with an ultra-long spin period of 76s. Nat Astron (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-022-01688-x
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