New Study Claims There Might Be Way More Pulsars in Space Than We Previously Thought

The spinning remains of the dead massive stars, known as pulsars, have long been believed to be able to emit radio signals only near their surfaces and near their magnetic poles. That assumption is disproved by a new study in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, which finds that some of the fastest-spinning pulsars in the universe send radio waves to the very edges of their magnetic influence - a finding that changes our perception of these cosmic lighthouses.

A Surprising Pattern in the Data

According to the scientific study by Michael Kramer of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and Simon Johnston of Australia's CSIRO, 200 millisecond pulsars, whose rotation is very fast, were studied in relation to gamma rays collected by the Fermi Space Telescope operated by NASA. The study revealed that one-third of the millisecond pulsars generated radio waves from separate regions, something that happens in only 3 percent of the slow pulsars.

Importantly, the radio emission emanating from the outer region coincided perfectly with the gamma rays originating from the "current sheet" of electrically charged particles outside the light cylinder.

Why This Matters

This discovery implies that there could be many more pulsars to be discovered in the future since the emission of radio waves does not occur in a small cone around the magnetic poles alone, but occurs in a broader range of directions. It is even more critical for the study of gravitational waves, as their detection depends on the use of an array of pulsars as an instrument. The problem that scientists must address next is the mechanism behind this phenomenon.