TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/022089/02208900.005

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 2KB | 34 lines

SCIENCE, Page 81

Cosmic Birth

First look at a young pulsar


    Scientists have been able only to theorize about the origin of
pulsars, those superdense, fast-spinning celestial objects that
appear to blink on and off as often as every millisecond. Now the
mystery seems to be solved. Last week an international team of
astronomers announced that they had detected a pulsar emerging from
the murky dust clouds left over from Supernova 1987A, a giant star
that exploded about 170,000 light-years from earth and was first
seen two years ago.

    Astronomers have long believed that pulsars are produced by
stellar explosions. Until now, though, no pulsar had been observed
so soon after its birth. The first pulsar was discovered in 1967,
its radio signals so regular that they were suspected of coming
from an alien civilization. Several hundred pulsars have since been
found.

    Because the new pulsar is so young, it is spinning almost
unimaginably fast. Its "day" is only one two-thousandth of a second
long, and while the earth's equator rotates at about 1,000 m.p.h.,
the pulsar's is moving at more than 200 million m.p.h. By rights,
the pulsar should fly apart, but it is so dense -- a teaspoon of
it would weigh 300,000 tons on earth -- that its gravity holds it
together. Says Richard Muller of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, a
member of the discovery team: "We can't help being astounded by
what we are seeing."

    Other astronomers are cautious about the find, since it is
based on only a single unconfirmed observation. But if it holds up,
says theorist Stan Woosley of the University of California at Santa
Cruz, "it will be a whole new laboratory for doing physics. It will
be marvelous."