{"id":17864,"date":"2024-09-24T02:21:59","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T20:51:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=17864"},"modified":"2025-10-03T12:09:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T06:39:18","slug":"pulsars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/pulsars\/","title":{"rendered":"What are Pulsars?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>About Pulsar:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Pulsars are <strong>rapidly rotating neutron stars<\/strong> that <strong>blast out pulses<\/strong> of radiation <strong>at regular intervals<\/strong> ranging from seconds to milliseconds.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Pulsars <strong>have very strong magnetic fields<\/strong>, which <strong>funnel jets of particles out<\/strong> along the two magnetic poles. These <strong>accelerated particles produce very powerful beams of light<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Often, the <strong>magnetic field<\/strong> is <strong>not aligned with the spin axis<\/strong>, <strong>so<\/strong> those <strong>beams of particles and light <\/strong>are <strong>swept around as the star rotates.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The <strong>periodicity<\/strong> of pulsars is <strong>caused by<\/strong> these <strong>beams of light crossing<\/strong> the <strong>line of sight on Earth<\/strong>, with the pulsar appearing to &#8216;switch off&#8217; at points when the light is facing away from us. The time between these pulses is the &#8216;period&#8217; of the pulsar.<\/li>\n<li>Pulsars have been <strong>primarily observed at radio wavelengths.\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Pulsar masses range between 1.18 and 1.97 times that of the Sun, but most pulsars have a mass 1.35 times that of the Sun.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What is a Neutron Star?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/neutron-stars\/\" target=\"_blank\">Neutron stars<\/a> are <strong>highly dense remnants of massive stars<\/strong> that have collapsed, composed mainly of neutrons and other elementary particles.<\/li>\n<li>Neutron stars are <strong>formed when a massive star runs out of fuel and collapses<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>The very central region of the star \u2013 <strong>the core <\/strong>\u2013 <strong>collapses<\/strong>, <strong>crushing together everyproton and electron into a neutron.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>If the core of the collapsing star is between about 1 and 3 solar masses, these newly-created neutrons can stop the collapse, leaving behind a neutron star.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What is the Green Bank Telescope (GBT)?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>With a 100 m \u00d7 110 m off-axis paraboloid dish, the GBT is the <strong>largest fully steerable radio telescope on Earth.\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>It is located at Green Bank Observatory in the National Radio Quiet Zone in Green Bank, <strong>West Virginia, U.S.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>Q1<\/strong>: What is a neutron?<\/h3>\n<p>Neutrons, along with protons, are subatomic particles found inside the nucleus of every atom. The only exception is hydrogen, where the nucleus contains only a single proton. Neutrons have a neutral electric charge (neither negative nor positive) and have slightly more mass than positively charged protons. \u201cFree\u201d neutrons are those no longer confined inside a nucleus. These free neutrons are produced by fission and fusion processes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2024-09-millisecond-pulsar.html#google_vignette\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">New millisecond pulsar discovered<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars that blast out pulses of radiation at regular intervals ranging from seconds to milliseconds.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":17865,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17864","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}