Lighthouse of the cosmos
Pulsar
The collapsed core of a supernova — a neutron star spinning hundreds of
times per second with a magnetic field a trillion times stronger than
Earth's. Its beams of radiation sweep across space like a lighthouse. When they
cross our line of sight, we detect a regular pulse — nature's most precise clock.
TYPEMillisecond pulsar
ROTATION PERIOD1.56 ms
SURFACE MAGNETIC FIELD~10⁸ T
DENSITY~4×10¹⁷ kg/m³
MASS1.4 M☉ (in ~20 km)
A sugar-cube-sized piece of this material would weigh as much as Mount Everest. The beams are produced by charged particles spiraling along the magnetic field lines at nearly the speed of light.