by CHARLES Q. CHOI
PULSAR POWER: This image, which combines data from the Hubble Space Telescope (visible light), Spitzer Space Telescope (infrared) and Chandra X-ray Observatory (X-rays) shows the Crab Pulsar. The X-ray emissions (in blue) show the location of high-energy phenomena. IMAGE/X-ray: NASA/CXC/J. Hester (ASU); Optical: NASA/ESA/J. Hester & A. Loll (ASU); Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Gehrz (Univ. Minn.)
Alien worlds that orbit the energetic dead stars known as pulsars may leave electric currents behind them—anomalies that could help researchers find more of these strange planets.
Astronomers know of only four “pulsar planets” so far, and much remains unknown about such worlds, but scientists propose that they formed in the chaos after the supernova explosions that gave birth to the pulsars.
A pulsar is a kind of neutron star, a stellar corpse left over from a supernova, a giant star explosion that crushes protons with electrons to form neutrons. Neutron star matter is the densest known material: A sugar cube-size piece weighs as much as a mountain, about 100 million tons. The mass of a single neutron star surpasses that of the sun while fitting into a ball smaller in diameter than the city of London.
Scientific American for more