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Though the general picture of pulsars as rapidly rotating neutron stars is widely accepted, Werner Becker of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics said in 2006, "The theory of how pulsars emit their radiation is still in its infancy, even after nearly forty years of work."
Millisecond pulsars have been detected in radio, X-ray, and gamma ray portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The leading hypothesis for the origin of millisecond pulsars is that they are old, rapidly rotating neutron stars that have been spun up or "recycled" through accretion of matter from a companion star in a close binary system.
Using the Arecibo 305 m dish, Hulse and Taylor detected pulsed radio emissions and thus identified the source as a pulsar, a rapidly rotating, highly magnetized neutron star. The neutron star rotates on its axis 17 times per second; thus the pulse period is 59 milliseconds .
PSR J0952–0607 is a massive millisecond pulsar in a binary system, located between 3,200–5,700 light-years (970–1,740 pc) from Earth in the constellation Sextans. [6] It holds the record for being the most massive neutron star known as of 2022, with a mass 2.35 ± 0.17 times that of the Sun—potentially close to the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff mass upper limit for neutron stars.
Pulsars are rotating neutron stars that have a magnetic field. A narrow beam of electromagnetic radiation is emitted from the poles of rotating pulsars. If the beam sweeps past the direction of the Solar System then the pulsar will produce a periodic pulse that can be detected from the Earth.
The Crab Pulsar is one of very few pulsars to be identified optically. The optical pulsar is roughly 20 kilometres (12 mi) in diameter and has a rotational period of about 33 milliseconds, that is, the pulsar "beams" perform about 30 revolutions per second. [6]
PSR B1257+12, previously designated PSR 1257+12, alternatively designated PSR J1300+1240, [6] is a millisecond pulsar, 2,300 light-years (710 parsecs) from the Sun, in the constellation Virgo, rotating at about 161 times per second (faster than the blade of a blender). [1] It is also named Lich, after a powerful, fictional undead creature. [7] [5]
PSR J1748−2446ad is the fastest-spinning pulsar known, at 716 Hz (times per second), [2] or 42,960 revolutions per minute.This pulsar was discovered by Jason W. T. Hessels of McGill University on November 10, 2004, and confirmed on January 8, 2005.