Lesson Five Topics

Lesson Five Overview
History of the Neutron Star
The Discovery of the Pulsar
Pulsars and Neutron Stars
How Do Neutron Stars Form?
Properties of Neutron Stars
The Magnetic Field of Neutron Stars
Why Do Neutron Stars Pulse?
Millisecond Pulsars
Pulsar in the Crab Supernova Remnant
Why Study Pulsars?


Activities and Quizzes

Lesson Five : Why Study Pulsars?

Astronomers have detected over 1,300 neutron stars in our galaxy, and they predict that many billions of neutron stars exist. Pulsars and neutron stars are very important fields of study, for everybody from x-ray ray astronomers to radio astronomers. Why are these objects so intriguing?

Pulsars are very bizarre, almost unfathomable, celestial objects. It is almost impossible to imagine an object propelling radiation into space at close to the speed of light or an object more massive than our Sun that would easily fit inside a city. We study pulsars because they are so oddly fascinating and so different from anything we experience here on Earth. They are sites of extreme physics: density, gravity, magnetic and electric fields.

As the extreme nature and bizarre properties of pulsars continue to be unveiled, astronomers will continue to learn more about our vast and perplexing universe. The information gained from pulsars can make it all seem a little less perplexing.