Record-breaking 'black-widow' pulsar found just 3,000 light-years from Earth

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The newfound system is the tightest such cannibalistic binary known.

at Palomar Observatory in California. As the accreting matter falls onto the pulsar, the extra angular momentum that it provides acts to spin the pulsar up by such a degree that it begins rotating at hundreds of times per second. Such rapidly spinning pulsars are referred to as millisecond pulsars.

As the pulsar spins up, it unleashes increasing amounts of radiation that heat the companion star's pulsar-facing side. Burdge's team reasoned that this would create a substantial difference in brightness between the companion's two hemispheres, and that as the companion star and pulsar orbit one another, we would see the star periodically brighten and dim as we see first its brighter pulsar-facing side and then its cooler far side.

"I thought, instead of looking directly for the pulsar, try looking for the star that it's cooking," said Burdge in a press statement. To verify that this would work, Burdge's team first used this method to identify some of the previously known black-widow binaries. Then, after sifting through data collected by the Zwicky Transient Facility, they identified a new object varying in brightness by a factor of 13 every hour, and which did not seem related to any previously known type of variable star.

"Everything seems to point to it being a black-widow binary," said Burdge."But there are a few weird things about it, so it's possible it's something new entirely."

 

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To 阿姆斯壯 David Scott

I like how you wrote 'just' making it seem close. Well a light year is about 9.5 trillion km now let's multiply this by 3000 = 28,500,000,000,000,000 kilometers The fastest travel we have is the Parker Solar Probe, travels at 724,000 km/hr so it could take us 4493 years +/-

5.88 trillion miles is one light year just to put shit in perspective

You would not want to cross that stream of energy.

my 🕷 senses are tingling

They should send me to take care of it

We should go look at it.

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