Black-widow pulsar found 3,000 light years away
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Black-widow pulsar found 3,000 light-years away from Earth
Space is a mystery in itself. There are different and mysterious objects existing in the space. Scientists have recently found a black-widow pulsar which is about 3,000 light-years away from the Earth.
What is binary pulsar?
A binary pulsar is a pulsar with a binary companion, often a white dwarf or neutron star.
What is Black-widow pulsar?
The Black-Widow Pulsar is an eclipsing binary millisecond pulsar in the Milky Way.
The pulsar stays alive by using its smaller companion stars.
How do pulsars arise?
Pulsars arise when supergiant stars collapse into neutron stars. When these neutron stars are magnetized and spin rapidly, they become a pulsar.
Black-widow pulsars
The new pulsar is the most extreme and rare black-widow pulsar. It is named ZTF J1406+1222. The binary pulsar has the shortest orbital period. The black-widow pulsar and its prey circles the binary system every 62 minutes. The black-widow pulsar is found with visible light and it came from the galactic centre.
Black-widow binary systems are powered by pulsars. The pulsars spin around every few milliseconds and it emits flashes of high-energy gamma and X-rays in the process.
The pulsars spin down and die quickly. The binary systems are called black-widow pulsars as it consumes the passing stars and gains new energy. The process seems like a spider eating its prey. The gravity of the black-widow pulsar feeds on the material of the star which provides new energy to the pulsar. The new pulsar starts radiating the new energy that destroys the stars further.
Watch this video about the black-widow pulsars posted by NASA Goddard on YouTube:
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