Titlebook: Clocks in the Sky; The Story of Pulsars Geoff McNamara Book 2008 Praxis 2008 Clocks.McNamara.Planet.Pulsars.astronomy.stars

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,’seeing Double’,table at the time of this pulsar’s discovery was a much slower, second pulsar signal. If this was indeed a double pulsar, it would provide a unique test bed for the most stringent test ever of Einstein’s theory of gravity, general relativity.

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,‘Life & Death Among The Stars’,ae and it is with these titanic events that this chapter will close. But before we go there, it is important to understand at least the basics of what makes stars shine, where they get their energy from, why they last so long and why they don’t last forever. Also fundamental to our story is why it i

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,‘What makes pulsars tick?’,d, that you were looking at a pulsar spinning on a pedestal. Paint a mark on the side of the pulsar near its equator. Now ask yourself: how fast would I have to drive in a car to keep up with that mark if the pulsar was spinning once a minute? Given a diameter of 20 km or so, you would in fact have

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,‘The Crab’,even more important role in pulsar astronomy. Aside from the intrinsic scientific interest of this object, it lies at the center of two stories of scientific priority. Priority — who discovered something first — is a big issue in science. Major discoveries always rely on technology (and hence techno

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,‘The Searchers’,sons why astronomers want to know. For one thing, since pulsars are clearly an important aspect of the story of stellar evolution, astronomers wanted to know just how many supernovae spawn pulsars and how often? It was also known that the pulsars radiate away angular momentum causing them to slow do