Any neutron stars spinning as slowly as PSR J0901-4046 are in a stellar “graveyard” and shouldn’t produce radio signals. And yet, this pulsar is.
While it’s an oddball, some of this newfound pulsar’s characteristics are common among its relatives. That means this object may help astronomers better connect the evolutionary phases among mysterious species in the neutron star menagerie.
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.
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.
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