JPL: The Case of the 'Missing Link' Neutron Star

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JPL: The Case of the 'Missing Link' Neutron Star

Post by bystander » Sat Jan 07, 2017 5:02 pm

The Case of the 'Missing Link' Neutron Star
NASA | JPL-Caltech | 2017 Jan 06
[img3="This artist's concept shows a pulsar, which is like a lighthouse, as its light appears in regular pulses as it rotates. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech"]http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/universe ... 085-16.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]
Like anthropologists piecing together the human family tree, astronomers have found that a misfit "skeleton" of a star may link two different kinds of stellar remains. The mysterious object, called PSR J1119-6127, has been caught behaving like two distinct objects -- a radio pulsar and a magnetar -- and could be important to understanding their evolution.

A radio pulsar is type of a neutron star -- the extremely dense remnant of an exploded star -- that emits radio waves in predictable pulses due to its fast rotation. Magnetars, by contrast, are rabble rousers: They have violent, high-energy outbursts of X-ray and gamma ray light, and their magnetic fields are the strongest known in the universe. ...

Since the 1970s, scientists have treated pulsars and magnetars as two distinct populations of objects. But in the last decade, evidence has emerged that these could be stages in the evolution of a single object. Majid's new study, combined with other observations of the object, suggests that J1119 could be in a never-before-seen transition state between radio pulsar and magnetar. ...

Post-Outburst Radio Observations of the High Magnetic Field Pulsar PSR J1119-6127 - Walid A. Majid et al Magnetar-like X-ray Bursts from a Rotation Powered Pulsar, PSR J1119-6127 - Ersin Gogus et al A Magnetar-like Outburst from a High-B Radio Pulsar - R. F. Archibald et al
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