Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Astronomers Find the Justin Bieber of Millisecond Pulsars

This cluster is 27,000 light-years away and lies farther than the center of our galaxy in the constellation Sagittarius. Credit: NASA/ESA/I. King, Univ. of Calif., Berkeley/Wikisky.org

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Astronomers using the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have found a surprisingly young, powerful and luminous millisecond pulsar. Over the past three years, Fermi has detected more than 100 gamma-ray pulsars and typically the ages of these objects are at least a billion year old. But this new object is just a youngster, born only about 25 million years ago.

“It is a bit like finding Justin Bieber when you thought you were at a Rolling Stones concert,” said Victoria Kaspi, physics professor, McGill University in Montreal, during a teleconference about two new discoveries made with the Fermi telescope. “Fermi has represented a huge leap forward in finding things that couldn’t have been imagined 25 years ago.”

In addition to the very young and bright pulsar, researchers announced they have also discovered a set of nine previously unknown gamma-ray pulsars, a new type that have extremely low luminosity. These were uncovered with a new technique to more efficiently sift through Fermi data.

The young millisecond pulsar, named PSR J1823?3021A was found within the globular cluster NGC 6624, not far from the center of our galaxy. Fermi has detected pulsars in globular clusters before, but usually what it finds are the combined gamma rays from many ancient pulsars within the clusters. But this time, surprisingly, the gamma rays originated from just one very powerful millisecond pulsar.

“At first we thought it was perhaps one hundred millisecond pulsars, but now we see it is just one,” said Paulo Freire, from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, also speaking to reporters during the teleconference. Freire is the lead author on a new paper published in the Astrophysical Journal. “It must have formed recently based on how rapidly it’s emitting energy. It’s a bit like finding a screaming baby in a quiet retirement home. This was a rather surprising discovery for everyone involved.”

A pulsar is a type of neutron star that emits electromagnetic energy at periodic intervals, sending out signals almost like a lighthouse. Pulsars that combine incredible density with extreme rotation are called millisecond pulsars. These millisecond pulsars are especially fascinating, as they are city-sized spheres about half millions times Earth’s mass, spinning at up to 43,000 revolutions per minute.

Millisecond pulsars are thought to achieve such speeds because they are gravitationally bound in binary systems with normal stars. During part of their stellar lives, gas flows from the normal star to the pulsar. Over time, the impact of this falling gas gradually spins up the pulsar’s rotation.

This plot shows the positions of nine new pulsars (magenta) discovered by Fermi and of an unusual millisecond pulsar (green) that Fermi data reveal to be the youngest such object known. With this new batch of discoveries, Fermi has detected more than 100 pulsars in gamma rays. Credit: AEI and NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration

The nine new low luminosity pulsars found with Fermi emit less gamma radiation than those previously known and rotate only between three and twelve times per second. Only one of these pulsars was later also found to emit radio waves. Without the new technique, astronomers wouldn’t have found this faint pulsars.

““We used a new kind of hierarchical algorithm which we had originally developed for the search for gravitational waves, and we were quickly rewarded,” said Bruce Allen, director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, a co-author on the recent discoveries.

Using what is called a blind search, computers check many different combinations of position and rotational behavior, to see if they match the arrival times of photons hitting the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) coming from the same direction. The search used the 8,000 photons deemed most probable to come from a pulsar at the recognized position, which Fermi’s LAT had collected during its three years in orbit. When the photon arrival times match up with the putative pulsar position and rotation model, a regular pattern of peaks appears in the gamma-ray photon counts, as a function of the rotational position of the pulsar, and a new gamma-ray pulsar has been discovered.

“It is a little like sifting through a pile of sand looking for diamonds,” Allen said, adding that the search is ongoing and they hope to find more.

Additionally, Allen said, users of the Einstein@Home project can now be part of this search, to help specifically to search for the first pure gamma-ray millisecond-pulsar. Allen is the director of this project and said this discovery would be a significant contribution to our understanding of pulsars.

NASA has a new interactive web feature about Fermi and the 100 pulsars it has now found.

Sources: Max Planck Institute, NASA, More info, images and vidoes at this NASA page

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Fermi Gamma Ray Observatory Harvests Cosmic Mysteries

This all-sky image, constructed from two years of observations by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, shows how the sky appears at energies greater than 1 billion electron volts (1 GeV). Brighter colors indicate brighter gamma-ray sources. For comparison, the energy of visible light is between 2 and 3 electron volts. A diffuse glow fills the sky and is brightest along the plane of our galaxy (middle). Discrete gamma-ray sources include pulsars and supernova remnants within our galaxy as well as distant galaxies powered by supermassive black holes. (Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration)

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When it comes to high-energy sources, no one knows them better than NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Taking a portrait of the entire sky every 240 minutes, the program is continually renewing and updating its sources and once a year the scientists harvest the data. These annual gatherings are then re-worked with new tools to produce an ever-deeper look into the Universe around us.

Fermi is famous for its analysis of steady gamma-ray sources, numerous transient events, the dreaded GRB and even flares from the Sun. Its all-sky map absolutely bristles with the energy that’s out there and earlier this year a second catalog of objects was released to eager public eyes. An astounding 1,873 objects were detected by the satellite’s Large Area Telescope (LAT) and this high energy form of light is turning some heads.

“More than half of these sources are active galaxies, whose massive black holes are responsible for the gamma-ray emissions that the LAT detects,” said Gino Tosti, an astrophysicist at the University of Perugia in Italy and currently a visiting scientist at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California.

One of the scientists who led the new compilation, Tosti presented a paper on the catalog at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s High Energy Astrophysics Division in Newport, R.I. “What is perhaps the most intriguing aspect of our new catalog is the large number of sources not associated with objects detected at any other wavelength,” he noted.

If we were to look at Fermi’s gathering experience as a harvest, we’d see two major components – crops and mystery. Add to that a bushel of pulsars, a basket of supernova remnants and a handful of other things, like galaxies and globular clusters. For Fermi farmers, harvesting new types of gamma-ray-emitting objects that are from “unassociated sources” would account for about 31% of the cash crop. However, the brave little Fermi LAT is producing results from some highly unusual sources. Mystery growth? Think this way… If it’s a light source, then it has a spectrum. When it comes to gamma rays, they’re seen at different energies. “At some energy, the spectra of many objects display what astronomers call a spectral break, that is, a greater-than-expected drop-off in the number of gamma rays seen at increasing energies.” Let’s take a look at two…

Within our galaxy is 2FGL J0359.5+5410. Right now, scientists just don’t understand what it is… only that it’s located in the constellation Camelopardalis. Since it appears about midplane, we’re just assuming it belongs to the Milky Way. From its spectrum, it might be a pulsar – but one without a pulse. Or how about 2FGL J1305.0+1152? It also resides along the midplane and smack dab in the middle of galaxy country – Virgo. Even after two years, Fermi can’t tease out any more details. It doesn’t even have a spectral break!

Pulsar? Blazar? Mystery…

Original Story Source: NASA Fermi News.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Star Transforms Into A Diamond Planet

Schematic view of the Pulsar-Planet system PSR J1719-1438 showing the pulsar with 5.7 ms rotation period in the centre, and the orbit of the planet in comparison to the size of the sun (marked in yellow). Credit: Swinburne Astronomy Productions, Swinburne University of Technology

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“Remember when you were young… You shone like the sun.” Four thousand light years away in the constellation of Serpens, a millisecond pulsar binary is pounding out its heartbeat. Meanwhile an international research team of scientists from Australia, Germany, Italy, the UK and the USA, including Prof. Michael Kramer from Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, German are listening in. Utilizing the 64-m radio telescope in Parkes, Australia, the team made a rather amazing discovery. The companion star could very well be an ultra-low mass carbon white dwarf… one that’s transformed itself into a planet made of pure diamond.

“The density of the planet is at least that of platinum and provides a clue to its origin”, said the research team leader, Prof. Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. Bailes leads the “Dynamic Universe” theme in a new wide-field astronomy initiative, the Centre of Excellence in All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO). He is presently on scientific leave at Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy.

Like a lighthouse, PSR J1719-1438 emits radio signals which sweep around methodically. When researchers noticed a specific modulation every 130 minutes, they realized they were picking up a signature of planetary proportions. Given the distance of its orbit, the companion could very well be the core of a once massive star whose material was consumed by pulsar’s gravity.

“We know of a few other systems, called ultra-compact low-mass X-ray binaries, that are likely to be evolving according to the scenario above and may likely represent the progenitors of a pulsar like J1719-1438” said Dr. Andrea Possenti, of INAF-Osservatorio Astronomicodi Cagliari.

With almost all of its original mass gone, very little of the companion could be left save for carbon and oxygen… and stars still rich in lighter elements like hydrogen and helium won’t fit the equation. This leaves a density which could very well be crystalline – and a composition which closely resembles diamond.

“The ultimate fate of the binary is determined by the mass and orbital period of the donor star at the time of mass transfer. The rarity of millisecond pulsars with planet-mass companions means that producing such ‘exotic planets’ is the exception and not the rule, and requires special circumstances”, said Dr. Benjamin Stappers from the University of Manchester.

“The new discovery came as a surprise for us. But there is certainly a lot more we’ll find out about pulsars and fundamental physics in the following years”, concludes Michael Kramer.

Shine on, you crazy diamond…

Original Story Source: Max Planck Institut for Radio Astronomy and Transformation of a Star into a Planet in a Millisecond Pulsar Binary.

Posted on by Jon Voisey

A Glitch in Pulsar J1718-3718

Pulsar diagram (© Mark Garlick)

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Pulsars are noted as being some of the universe’s best clocks. Their highly magnetized nature gives rise to beams of high energy radiation that sweep out across the universe. If these beams pass Earth, they can rival atomic clocks in their precision. So precise are these timings, that the first extrasolar planet was discovered through the effects it had on this heartbeat. But in September of 2007, pulsar J1718-3719 appears to have had a seizure.

These disjunctions aren’t unprecedented. While not exactly frequent, such “glitches” have been noted previously in other pulsars and magnetars. These glitches are often displayed as a sudden change in the period of the pulsar suddenly drops and then slowly relaxes back to the pre-glitch value at a characteristic rate dependent on the previous value as well as how large the jump was. Behavior like this has been seen in other pulsars including PSR B2334+61 and PSR 1048-5397.

The size of a glitch is measured as a ratio of the change in speed due to the glitch as compared to that of the pre-glitch speed. For past glitches, these have generally been changes that are around a hundredth of a percent. While this may not sound like a large change, the stars on which they act are exceptionally dense neutron stars. As such, even a small change in rotational energy means a large amount of energy involved.

Previously, the largest known glitch was 20.5 x 10-6 for PSR B2334+61. The new glitch in PSR J1718-3718 beats this record with a frequency change of 33.25 x 10-6. Aside from being a record setter, this new glitch does not appear to be following the trend of returning to previous values. The changed period persisted for the 700 days astronomers at the Australia Telescope National Facility observed it. Pulsars tend to have a slow braking applied to them due to a difference between their rotational axes and their magnetic ones. This too generally returns to a standard value for a given pulsar following a glitch, but PSR J1718-3718 defied expectations here as well, having a persistently higher braking effect which has continued to increase.

Currently, astronomers know precious little about the effects which may cause these glitches. There is no evidence to suggest that the phenomenon is something external to the body itself. Instead, astronomers suspect that there are occasional alignments of the stars internal superfluid core which rotates more quickly, with the star’s crust that cause the two to occasionally lock together. Models of neutron stars have had some success at reproducing this odd behavior, but none have suggested an event like PSR J1718-3718. Instead, the authors of the recent study suggest that this may have been caused by a fracturing of the crust of the neutron star or some yet unknown internal reaction. The possibilities currently are not well constrained but studying future events like these will help astronomers refine their models.

Posted on by Nicholos Wethington

An Apertif to the Next Radio Astronomy Entrée

A new detector at the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) allows for a much wider view of the sky in the radio spectrum. In this image, the two pulsars are separated by over 3.5 degrees of arc in the sky. Image Credit: ASTRON

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To aid in the digestion of a new era in radio astronomy, a new technique for improving the is unfolding at the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) in the Netherlands. By adding a plate of detectors to the focal plane of just one of the 14 radio antennas at the WSRT, astronomers at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) have been able to image two pulsars separated by over 3.5 degrees of arc, which is about 7 times the size of the full Moon as seen from Earth.

The new project – called Apertif – uses an array of detectors in the focal plane of the radio telescope. This ‘phased array feed’ – made of 121 separate detectors – increases the field of view of the radio telescope by over 30 times. In doing so, astronomers are able to see a larger portion of the sky in the radio spectrum. Why is this important? Well, in keeping with our food course analogy, imagine trying to eat a bowl of soup with a thimble – you can only get a small portion of the soup into your mouth at a time. Then imagine trying to eat it with a ladle.

This same analogy of surveying and observing the sky for radio sources holds true. Dr. Tom Oosterloo, the Principle Investigator of the Apertif project, explains the meat of the new technique:

“The phased array feed consists of 121 small antennas, closely packed together. This matrix covers about 1 square meter. Each WSRT will have such a antenna matrix in its focus. This matrix fully samples the radiation field in the focal plane. By combining the signals of all 121 elements, a ‘compound beams'[sic] can be formed which can be steered to be pointing at any location inside a region of 3×3 degrees on the sky. By combining the signals of all 121 elements, the response of the telescope can be optimised, i.e. all optical distortions can be removed (because the radiation field is fully measured). This process is done in parallel 37 times, i.e. 37 compound beams are formed. Each compound beam basically functions as a separate telescope. If we do this in all WSRT dishes, we have 37 WSRTs in parallel. By steering all the beams to different locations within the 3×3 degree region, we can observe this region entirely.”

In other words, traditional radio telescopes use only a single detector in the focal plane of the telescope (where all of the radiation is focused by the telescope). The new detectors are somewhat like the CCD chip in your camera, or those in use in modern optical telescopes like Hubble. Each separate detector in the array receives data, and by combining the data into a composite image a high-quality image can be captured.

The new array will also widen the field of view of the radio telescope, which allowed for this most recent observation of widely separated pulsars in the sky, a milestone test for the project. As an added bonus, the new detector will increase the efficiency of the “aperture” to around 75%, up from 55% with the traditional antennas.

Dr. Oosterloo explained, “The aperture efficiency is higher because we have much more control over the radiation field in the focal plane. With the classic single antenna systems (as in the old WSRT or as in the eVLA), one measures the radiation field in a single point only. By measuring the radiation field over the entire focal plane, and by cleverly combining the signals of all elements, optical distortion effects can be minimised and a larger fraction of the incoming radiation can be used to image the sky.”

This image illustrates the larger field of view afforded by the new instrument. Image Credit: ASTRON

For now, there is only one of the 14 radio antennas equipped with Apertif. Dr. Joeri Van Leeuwen, a researcher at ASTRON, said in an email interview that in 2011, 12 of the antennas will be outfitted with the new detector array.

Sky surveys have been a boon for astronomers in recent years. By taking enormous amounts of data and making it available to the scientific community, astronomers have been able to make many more discoveries than they would have been able to by applying for time on disparate instruments.

Though there are some sky surveys in the radio spectrum that have been completed so far – the VLA FIRST Survey being the most prominent – the field has a long way to go. Apertif is the first step in the direction of surveying the whole sky in the radio spectrum with great detail, and many discoveries are expected to be made by using the new technique.

Apertif is expected to discover over 1,000 pulsars, based on current modeling of the Galactic pulsar population. It will also be a useful tool in studying neutral hydrogen in the Universe on large scales.

Dr. Oosterloo et. al. wrote in a paper published on Arxiv in July, 2010, “One of the main scientific applications of wide-field radio telescopes operating at GHz frequencies is to observe large volumes of space in order to make an inventory of the neutral hydrogen in the Universe. With such information, the properties of the neutral hydrogen in galaxies as function of mass, type and environment can be studied in great detail, and, importantly, for the first time the evolution of these properties with redshift can be addressed.”

Adding the radio spectrum to the visible and infrared sky surveys would help to fine-tune current theories about the Universe, as well as make new discoveries. The more eyes on the sky we have in different spectra, the better.

Though Apertif is the first such detector in use, there are plans to update other radio telescopes with the technology. Dr. Oosterloo said of other such projects, “Phased array feeds are also being built by ASKAP, the Australia SKA Pathfinder. This is an instrument of similar characteristics as Apertif. It is our main competitor, although we also collaborate on many things. I am also aware of a prototype being tested at Arecibo currently. In Canada, DRAO [Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory] is doing work on phased array feed development. However, only Apertif and ASKAP will construct an actual radio telescope with working phased array feeds in the short term.”

On November 22nd and 23rd, a science coordination meeting was held about the Apertif project in Dwingeloo, Drenthe, Netherlands. Dr. Oosterloo said that the meeting was attended by 40 astronomers, from Europe, the US, Australia and South Africa to discuss the future of the project, and that there has been much interest in the potential of the technique.

Sources: ASTRON press release, Arxiv, email interview with Dr. Tom Oosterloo and Dr. Joeri Van Leeuwen

Posted on by Jon Voisey

Possibility for White Dwarf Pulsars?

AE Aquarii - A possible White Dwarf Pulsar
The white dwarf in the AE Aquarii system is the first star of its type known to give off pulsar-like pulsations that are powered by its rotation and particle acceleration.

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Some satellites get all the glory. While Hubble, Chandra, and Spitzer frequently make headlines with their stunning images, many other space based observatories silently toil away. One of them, known as the Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics (PAMELA) has been in orbit since 2006, but rarely receives media attention although a stunning discovery has led to the publication of over 300 papers within a single year. A new paper in that onslaught has proposed an interesting new object: pulsars powered by white dwarfs.
PAMELA isn’t a satellite in its own right. It piggybacks on another satellite. Its mission is to observe high energy cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are particles, whether they be protons, electrons, nuclei of entire atoms, or other pieces, that are accelerated to high velocities, often from exotic sources and cosmological distances.

Among the types of particles PAMELA detects is the elusive positron. This anti-particle of the electron is quite rare due to the scarcity of anti-matter in general in our universe. However, much to the surprise of astronomers, in the range of 10 – 100 GeV, PAMELA has reported an abundance of positrons. In even higher ranges (100 GeV – 1 TeV) astronomers have found that there is a rise in both electrons and positrons. The conclusion from this is that something is able to actually create these particles in these energy ranges.

A flurry of papers went to publication to explain this unexpected finding. Explanations ranged from showers of particles created by even higher energy cosmic rays striking the interstellar medium, to the decay of dark matter, to neutron stars, pulsars, supernovae, and gamma ray bursts. Indeed, many events that produce high energies are sufficient to spontaneously produce matter from energy through the process of pair production. However, the range of these ejected particles would be limited. Effects, such as synchrotron and inverse Compton emission would drain their energy over large distances and as such, by the time they reached PAMELA’s detectors would be too low energy to account for the excesses in the observed energy ranges. From this, astronomers are presuming the culprits are in the local universe.

Joining the long list of candidates, a new paper has proposed a mundane object could be responsible for the high energy necessary to create these energetic particles, albeit with an unusual twist. Neutron stars, one of the potential objects formed in a supernova, are known to release large amounts of energies when spinning quickly while creating a strong magnetic field in the form of pulsars, but the authors propose that white dwarfs, the products of the slow death from stars not massive enough to result in a supernova, may be able to do the same thing. The difficulty in creating such a white dwarf pulsar is that, since white dwarfs don’t collapse to such a small size, they don’t “spin up” as much as they conserve angular momentum and shouldn’t have the sufficient angular velocity necessary.

The authors, led by Kazumi Kashiyama at Kyoto University propose that a white dwarf may reach the necessary rotational speed if they undergo a merger or accrete a sufficient amount of mass. This idea is not unheard of since white dwarf mergers and accretion are already implicated in Type Ia Supernovae. The combination of this with the expectation that around 10% of white dwarfs are expected to have magnetic fields of 106 Gauss, the steps necessary to produce a pulsar from a white dwarf seem to be in place. They note that since white dwarfs tend to have weaker magnetic fields, they shed their angular momentum more slowly and would last longer. Although this duration is still far longer than humans can possibly watch, this may indicate that many of the pulsars observed in our own galaxy are white dwarfs.

Next, the authors hope to conclusively identify such a star. The creation of each of these types of pulsars may provide a clue: Since neutron stars form from supernovae, they are surrounded by a shell of gas that contains a shock front from the supernova itself, which is more dense than the interstellar medium in general. As particles pass through this shock front, some of them would be lost. The same would not be said for white dwarfs which formed from a more gentle release and aren’t impeded by the relatively high density area. This shift in energy distributions may be one distinguishing characteristic.

Some stars have even been tentatively proposed as candidates for white dwarf pulsars. AE Aquarii was seen to give off some pulsar-like signals. EUVE J0317-855 is another white dwarf that appears to meet the qualifications, although no signals have been detected from this star. This new class of stars would be able to explain the excess signal in the higher energy range detected by PAMELA and will likely be the target of further observational searches in the future.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Einstein@Home Citizen Scientists Discover Weird Pulsar

Screenshot of Einstein@Home. Image courtesty of B. Knispel of Albert Einstein Institute

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Hooray for citizen scientists! The Einstein@Home project has discovered a unusual pulsar approximately 17,000 light-years away in the constellation Vulpecula. The project works by people “donating” idle time on their home computers. This is the first deep-space discovery by Einstein@Home, and the finding is credited to Chris and Helen Colvin, from Ames, Iowa in the US, and Daniel Gebhardt of Universitat Mainz, Musikinformatik,Germany.

The newly discovered pulsar, PSR J2007+2722, is an isolated neutron star that rotates 41 times per second and has an unusually low magnetic field.

Jim Cordes, Cornell professor of astronomy, said the object is particularly interesting because it is likely a recycled pulsar: a neutron star that once had a companion star from which it acquired mass; but whose companion exploded, kicking it free.

Unlike most pulsars that spin as quickly and steadily, PSR J2007+2722 sits alone in space, and has no orbiting companion star. However, the scientists say they can not rule out that it may be a young pulsar born with an lower-than-usual magnetic field.

“We think there should be more of these disrupted binary pulsars, but there haven’t been that many found,” said Cordes. “No matter what else we find out about it, this pulsar is bound to be extremely interesting for understanding the basic physics of neutron stars and how they form.”

The discovery demonstrates the power of the network used to collect and sort through vast amounts of data, Cordes said.

Einstein@Home was originally organized to find gravitational waves — ripples in space-time — using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO). In 2009, data from the Arecibo Observatory were included in the processing.

Chris and Helen Colvin who were credited with discovering a new pulsar. Image courtesy Chris Colvin.

Einstein@Home is based at the Center for Gravitation and Cosmology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute, or AEI) in
Hannover, Germany. About one-third of Einstein@Home’s computing capacity is used to search Arecibo data.

Einstein@Home volunteer Daniel Gebhardt from Germany. Image couresty of Gebhardt.


“This is a thrilling moment for Einstein@Home and our volunteers. It proves that public participation can discover new things in our universe,” said Bruce Allen, leader of the Einstein@Home project, AEI director and adjunct professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “I hope it inspires more people to join us to help find other secrets hidden in the data.”

Gebhardt and the Colvins will receive plaques noting their discovery, and all plan to stay involved.

For information on how you can get involved in the project, see the Einstein@Home website.

Sources: Cornell University, ScienceExpress.

On a related note, check out these Albert Einstein quotes.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Faster-Than-Light Pulsar Phenomena

Artist's impression of an anomalous X-ray pulsar. Credit: ESA

Observational data from nine pulsars, including the Crab pulsar, suggest these rapidly spinning neutron stars emit the electromagnetic equivalent of a sonic boom, and a model created to understand this phenomenon shows that the source of the emissions could be traveling faster than the speed of light. Researchers say as the polarization currents in these emissions are whipped around with a mechanism likened to a synchrotron, the sources could be traveling up to six times light speed, or 1.8 million km per second. However, although the source of the radiation exceeds the speed of light, the emitted radiation travels at normal light speed once it leaves the source. “This is not science fiction, and no laws of physics were broken in this model,” said John Singleton of Los Alamos National Laboratory at a press briefing at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, DC. “And Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity is not violated.”

This model, called the superluminal model of pulsars, was described by Singleton and colleague Andrea Schmidt as solving many unanswered issues about pulsars.”We can account for a number of probabilities with this model,” said Singleton, “and there is a huge amount of observational data available, so there will be ample opportunities to verify this.”

Pulsars emit amazingly regular, short bursts of radio waves. Within the emissions from the pulses, the circulating polarization currents move in a circular orbit, and its emitted radiation is analogous to that of electron synchrotron facilities used to produce radiation from the far-infrared to X-ray for experiments in biology and other subjects. In other words, the pulsar is a very broadband source of radiation.

However, Singleton said, the fact that the source moves faster than the speed of light results in a flux that oscillates as a function of frequency. “Despite the large speed of the polarization current itself, the small displacements of the charged particles that make it up means that their velocities remain slower than light,” he said.

These superluminal polarization currents are disturbances in the pulsar’s plasma atmosphere in which oppositely-charged particles are displaced by small amounts in opposite directions; they are induced by the neutron star’s rotating magnetic field. This creates the electromagnetic equivalent of a sonic boom from accelerating supersonic aircraft. Just as the “boom” can be very loud a long way from the aircraft, the analogous signals from the pulsar remain intense over very long distances.

Rapid condensation of water vapor due to a sonic shock produced at sub-sonic speed creates a vapor cone (known as a Prandtl–Glauert singularity), which can be seen with the naked eye.

Back in the 1980s, Nobel laureate Vitaly Ginzburg and colleagues showed that such faster than light polarization currents will act as sources of electromagnetic radiation. Since then, the theory has been developed by Houshang Ardavan of Cambridge University, UK, and several ground-based demonstrations of the principle have been carried out in the United Kingdom, Russia and the USA. So far, polarization currents traveling at up to six times the speed of light have been demonstrated to emit tightly-focused bursts of radiation by the ground-based experiments.

Although Singleton and Schmidt’s highly technical presentation was admittedly over the heads of many in attendance (and watching online), LANL researchers said the superluminal model fits data from the Crab pulsar and eight other pulsars, spanning electromagnetic frequencies from the radio to X-rays. In each case, the superluminal model accounted for the entire data set over 16 orders of magnitude of frequency with essentially only two adjustable parameters. In contrast to previous attempts, where several disparate models have been used to fit small frequency ranges of pulsar spectra, Schmidt said that a single emission process can account for the whole of the pulsar’s spectrum.

“We think we can explain all observational data using this method,” Singleton said.

When asked, Singleton said they have received some hostile reactions to their model from the pulsar community, but that many others have been “charitably disposed because it explains a lot of their data.”

Lead image caption: Artist’s impression of an anomalous X-ray pulsar. Credit: ESA

Papers: Singleton et al,, Ardavan, et al, Ardavan, et al
Sources: AAS press conference, LANL,

Posted on by Ryan Anderson

New Pulsar “Clocks” Will Aid Gravitational Wave Detection

This illustration shows a pulsar’s magnetic field (blue) creates narrow beams of radiation (magenta). Image credit: NASA

How do you detect a ripple in space-time itself? Well, you need hundreds of precision clocks distributed throughout the galaxy, and the Fermi gamma ray telescope has given astronomers a new way to find them.

The “clocks” in question are actually millisecond pulsars – city-sized, sun-massed stars of ultradense matter that spin hundreds of times per second. Due to their powerful magnetic fields, pulsars emit most of their radiation in tightly focused beams, much like a lighthouse. Each spin of the pulsar corresponds to a “pulse” of radiation detectable from Earth. The rate at which millisecond pulsars pulse is extremely stable, so they serve as some of the most reliable clocks in the universe.

Astronomers watch for the slightest variations in the timing of millisecond pulsars which might suggest that space-time near the pulsar is being distorted by the passage of a gravitational wave. The problem is, to make a reliable measurement requires hundreds of pulsars, and until recently they have been extremely difficult to find.

“We’ve probably found far less than one percent of the millisecond pulsars in the Milky Way Galaxy,” said Scott Ransom of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).

Data from the Fermi gamma-ray space telescope, which started collecting data in 2008, have changed the way millisecond pulsars are detected. The Fermi telescope has identified hundreds of gamma-ray sources in the Milky Way. Gamma rays are high-energy photons, and they are produced near exotic objects, including millisecond pulsars.

“The data from Fermi were like a buried-treasure map,” Ransom said. “Using our radio telescopes to study the objects located by Fermi, we found 17 millisecond pulsars in three months. Large-scale searches had taken 10-15 years to find that many.”

Ransom and collaborator Mallory Roberts of Eureka Scientific used the National Science Foundation’s Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) to find eight of the 17 new pulsars.

Right now astronomers have only barely enough millisecond pulsars to make a convincing gravitational wave detection, but with Fermi to help identify more pulsars, the odds of detecting these ripples in space-time are steadily increasing.

Ransom and Roberts announced their discoveries today at the American Astronomical Society’s meeting in Washington, DC.

(NRAO Press Release)

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Exploring to the Beat of Pulsars

PULSE@Parkes project. Credit: Andrew Crosling

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An innovative project that provides high school students in Australia the opportunity to work with the famous Parkes radio telescope will soon make the data available to schools around the world. The PULSE@Parkes project allows for hands-on remote observing of pulsars producing real-time data, which then becomes part of a growing database used by professional astronomers. “Students can help monitor pulsars and identify unusual ones or detect sudden glitches in their rotation,” said Rob Hollow from the Australia Telescope National Facility, and coordinator for the PULSE@Parkes project. “They can also help determine the distance to existing pulsars.”

Initially, the project was only available to schools in Australia, but PULSE@Parkes hopes to expand globally, allowing students to collaborate on monitoring pulsar data. The first international session will be held on Dec. 7, 2009 at Cardiff University in the UK.

“We had the challenge to develop and implement simulation radio astronomy activities for high school students, providing the opportunity for them to actually use a radio telescope facility and engage with professional scientists,” said Hollow, speaking at the .Astronomy (dot Astronomy) conference this week in Leiden, The Netherlands. “We also wanted to have students doing science that is appropriate for them and useful for professional astronomers.”

Students in Sydney controlling the Parkes radio telescope. Credit: R. Hollow, CSIRO
Students in Sydney controlling the Parkes radio telescope. Credit: R. Hollow, CSIRO

Hollow said that even though radio astronomy data consists of squiggly lines, students are still engaged by the results, even without the pretty pictures produced by other astronomical instruments. “It works surprisingly well, and the visuals haven’t been as big an issue and we thought,” Hollow said. “But in looking at pulsars, the students do get the pulse profiles and they get immediate feedback.”

Plus, when the dish actually moves in response to the students’ inputs, they really become engaged. “There’s a real ‘wow’ factor in being able to control the telescope,” Hollow said. “The students pick it up quickly, and they really like that they are contributing to science.”

Recently, the first science paper was published using results obtained by students.

The program is done remotely, and students view webcams of the telescope and control room. They control the telescope directly via the internet, monitor the data in real time, and use Skype to communicate with astronomers at Parkes.

So far, Hollow said, they have done 25 sessions, with 28 schools, working with about 450 students. “This project is not just for gift and talented students,” he said, “and any school can apply.”

The Parkes Radio Telescope. Credit: R. Hollow, CSIRO
The Parkes Radio Antenna. Credit: R. Hollow, CSIRO

Parkes is a 64 m diameter radio antenna that was built in 1961. Hollow said the dish has received regular updates and is still on the cutting edge of science. Most famously, Parkes was to receive video from the Apollo mission to the Moon.

Hollow said he sees PULSE@Parkes as just the beginning of working with students. The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) will be coming online in just a couple of years, with thirty-six 12-meter dishes. “This will provide for very fast surveys that will increase the area of coverage and increase the capability for sensitivity,” Hollow said. “From ASKAP, we’ll be getting massive data sets, which will provide more opportunity for student and public involvement.

For more information, including an audio of what a pulsar “sounds” like, as well as info for schools and teachers, requirements, and how to apply visit the PULSE@Parkes website