McNamara Clocks in the Sky

The Story of Pulsars
1. Auflage 2009
ISBN: 978-0-387-76562-4
Verlag: Springer
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 190 Seiten

Reihe: Popular Astronomy

Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars, the collapsed cores of once massive stars that ended their lives as supernova explosions. In this book, Geoff McNamara explores the history, subsequent discovery and contemporary research into pulsar astronomy. The story of pulsars is brought right up to date with the announcement in 2006 of a new breed of pulsar, Rotating Radio Transients (RRATs), which emit short bursts of radio signals separated by long pauses. These may outnumber conventional radio pulsars by a ratio of four to one. Geoff McNamara ends by pointing out that, despite the enormous success of pulsar research in the second half of the twentieth century, the real discoveries are yet to be made including, perhaps, the detection of the hypothetical pulsar black hole binary system by the proposed Square Kilometre Array - the largest single radio telescope in the world.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mcnamara, Geoff

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Contents;5
2;List of Illustrations;7
3;Acknowledgments;9
4;List of Abbreviations and Acronyms;11
5;Prologue: Buried in the data;12
6;Introduction;13
7;1 'Life & Death Among The Stars';16
8;2 '1932';26
9;3 'A New Window';37
10;4 'Scruff';49
11;5 'What makes pulsars tick?';64
12;6 'The Crab';76
13;7 'Optical Pulsars';89
14;8 'The Searchers';104
15;9 'Two by Two';116
16;10 'Faster';127
17;11 'Globular Pulsars';134
18;12 'Pulsar Planets';142
19;13 'Magnetars';151
20;14 'Seeing Double';160
21;15 'Of Multibeams and RRATs';168
22;16 'The Future';177
23;Appendix: Recollections of a Scientific Error;183
24;Index;189