RRAT
9 Dec 2005 5:06:16 UTC
Topic 190335
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It looks like there is a new monster in the sky, the RRAT (see www.skyandtelescope.com). It emits powerful bursts of radiowaves at irregular intervals, not regularly like the pulsars, and could be a neutron star resulting from a supernova. Not all sopernovae have given birth to pulsars, like the CRAB Nebula pulsar. This new class of objects has been discovered by a team analyzing data obtained by the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia,one of the largest disks. But read the story, the sky is still full of surprises.
Tullio
RRAT
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great post
It seems that every time we find a new way to examine the universe we find something new. In this case improvement in time resolution has shown us another of nature's treausers. Hopefully E@H will open another window into our cosmos.
Tullio, Are you talking
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Tullio,
Are you talking about astro-ph/0511587? Basically, this observation means that there are a lot more neutron stars out there we don't see in radio because they spend most of their time "dark". Most of them are probably spinning too slowly for LIGO to detect the periodic gravitational waves with Einstein@Home. But even then, it means there are more double neutron star binaries out there, and LIGO can detect signals from the "inspirals" - the last few minutes of their lives - more frequently than we thought. Good news, anyway, and we keep hoping for more good surprises.
Ben