Iran Daily

Radio telescope captures neutron star’s glitch for first time

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Scientists in Australian State of Tasmania have become the first to capture the Vela Pulsar ‘glitch’, it was revealed.

Over 1,000 light years away, the 20-km wide neutron star weighs one and half times the Earth’s sun and like all pulsars, it rotates extremely rapidly, in this case around 11 times per second, according to xinhuanet.com.

But unknown to scientists, in some cases, a pulsar will abruptly change rotation rates and this is what researcher­s referred to as a ‘glitch’.

University of Tasmania PHD candidate Jim Palfreyman said, “No one has ever observed a glitch happen with a radio telescope large enough to see the individual pulses coming from the pulsar.”

With a glitch taking place approximat­ely once every three years, Palfreyman and his colleagues at the CSIRO and the Auckland University of Technology have spent the past four years monitoring the Vela Pulsar for the moment to happen.

Palfreyman said, “It’s a bit like an earthquake, no one can predict one.

“We knew that if we could capture the glitch and the individual pulses it would provide us a wealth of informatio­n, including how matter behaves at extreme temperatur­es and pressures.”

Using a state of the art 26 meter radio telescope at the Mount Pleasant Observator­y in Tasmania along with a 30 meter radio telescope South Australia, it seems Palfreyman and his team may have unlocked the reason for the so called glitch.

He explained, “The way the glitch occurs is quite complex where the superfluid core of the star spins separately from the hard crust on the outside.

“Then after about three years the core grabs the crust, which is slowing down, and speeds it up, causing the glitch to occur.

“By capturing the glitch, and the individual pulses, it helps us to better understand the equation of state, which is how matter behaves in different environmen­ts.”

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