Facts about Pulsars

1. 07

   A single pulsar can be so precisely regular that astronomers use millisecond pulsars as cosmic clocks more accurate than atomic clocks on Earth.

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2. 06

   Pulsars emit beams of radiation from their magnetic poles that sweep across Earth like a lighthouse, allowing us to detect them as regular pulses even though they rotate continuously.

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3. 05

   Binary pulsars like PSR B1913+16 lose orbital energy at exactly the rate predicted by Einstein's general relativity, providing the first experimental confirmation of gravitational waves in 1974.

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4. 04

   Neutron stars compress more mass than Earth's sun into a sphere roughly 20 kilometers across, making a teaspoon of pulsar material weigh as much as a billion tons.

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5. 03

   Pulsar PSR B0531+21 in the Crab Nebula emits radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum from radio waves to gamma rays, releasing energy equivalent to 100,000 suns.

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6. 02

   In 1974, Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish discovered the first pulsar, CP 1919, which pulsed with remarkable precision every 1.3373 seconds.

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7. 01

   The millisecond pulsar PSR B1937+21 rotates 641 times per second, making it one of the fastest-spinning neutron stars known to astronomy.

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