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Pulsars

A period of change

Nature volume 394, pages 323–324 (1998)Cite this article

On pages 344and 346 of this issue, Wijnands and van der Klis1, and Chakrabarty and Morgan2, report the discovery of the first accreting millisecond X-ray pulsar. This bridges a vital gap in our theory of how pulsars evolve. It should also help us to test the predictions of General Relativity, and directly measure some of the properties of super-dense nuclear matter.

There are, instead, many bright X-ray sources that do not show large-amplitude, coherent pulsations. Most of them are old X-ray binaries, where the companion star has a long life (like our Sun). Although some may harbour black holes, most are thought to contain the progenitors of millisecond radio pulsars. If these are old neutron stars with magnetic fields that have decayed by a factor of 1,000 or more from their birth values, then the neutron star may be buried deep in a thick disk of accreting matter (a larger magnetic field would sweep the inner regions of the disk clear). The surrounding material may be disguising buried X-ray pulsars, by ‘smearing out’ the direct pulse from the pulsar, giving it a very low-amplitude modulation.

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Figure 1: A star is reborn: artist's impression of the J1808-369 system.

NASA/GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER & W. FEIMER, ALLIED SIGNAL

References

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  1. the Astrophysics Branch, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 662, Greenbelt, 20771, Maryland, USA

    Nicholas E. White

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  1. Nicholas E. White
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White, N. A period of change. Nature 394, 323–324 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/28503

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