the.com/pulsar
a dead star spinning hundreds of times a second, lighthousing the universe with cosmic clockwork.
means A rapidly rotating neutron star that emits regular beams of radiation, detected on Earth as precise, repeating pulses.
from A 1960s blend of 'pulse' and the '-ar' ending borrowed from 'quasar.' When the first one was found in 1967, its signal was so metronomically regular that astronomers half-jokingly tagged it LGM-1 — 'Little Green Men' — wondering if it was a beacon. It wasn't aliens, just a spinning stellar corpse, but the name 'pulsating star,' clipped to 'pulsar,' stuck. 'Pulse' itself traces back through Latin 'pulsus,' from 'pellere,' to beat or drive — the same root that gives us 'pulse' in your wrist.
- first signal
- named LGM-1, for little green men
- absurd density
- a teaspoon weighs billions of tons
- precision
- rivals atomic clocks, ticks for eons
- spin speed
- fastest rotates 716 times per second
- birth
- the corpse of an exploded star
crab pulsar — neutron star remnant of sn 1054 supernova, spins 30 times per second in taurus
psr b1509-58 — young energetic pulsar in msh 15-52 supernova remnant, 150 km/s wind speed