Astronomers pick up unusual pulses from the cosmos

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Astronomers have discovered a most unusual neutron star. Widely challenging our understanding of these stars, this one could help unravel the mystery of fast radio bursts.

An abnormally slow neutron star

The neutron stars are the dense cores that massive stars leave behind when they explode into supernovae. It turns out that some of them emit beams of radiation from their poles. When these reach the Terrethey appear as short, regular pulses of radio broadcasts, earning them the title of ” pulsars ».

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While most pulsars spin extremely fast (milliseconds to seconds), the newly discovered object completes a full rotation every 75.88 seconds, making it by far the world’s most radio pulse-emitting neutron star. slowest ever discovered (it took 23.5 seconds for the previous record holder to complete a full lap).

It has long been thought that the radioelectric emissions produced by neutron stars were closely linked to their rotational speed, and that a significant slowing down of the latter would cause them to stop. With a rotation time exceeding one minute, the new pulsar challenges the models of this process. Stranger still, the team discovered that the object emitted seven different types of pulses.

One of the 64 antennas of the MeerKAT radio telescope — © Morganoshell

Seven different pulse types

While his impulses normal peaked in brightness and then faded, some had two or three, or had a much more irregular brightness, giving the graph a ” bristling “. According to the authors of the new study, published in the journal Nature Astronomythe object exhibits an odd mix of characteristics of pulsars, very long-period magnetars, and fast radio burstswhich could help to better understand their links.

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Appointed PSR J0901-4046the pulsar was discovered thanks to the radio telescope MeerKATin South Africa. According to the team, the extremely slow pulsation is the main reason why such objects have so far escaped detection.

« Surprisingly, we only detected the radio emission from this source during 0.5% of its rotation period “, highlighted Manisha Caleb, lead author of the study. ” It is therefore likely that there are many more of these very slowly rotating stars in the galaxy, which has important implications for understanding how neutron stars are born and evolve.. »