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I heard that plane a bit but generally I never hear those noises you're always complaining about. It must be distracting for you though. I'm with you on detesting loud bikes and cars. So awful
I'm kind of interested in that site after more than one channel I follow has mentioned it. @DrBecky have you really tried it and it's actually good? Or has anyone else reading this actually tried it themselves? Seems potentially useful to find higher quality news. I don't like that a few major news corporations dominate most news feeds including TH-cam and their products are mostly entertainment rather than news.
We have idealized idea or model of what neutron stars and white dwarves are but for an alien creature coming from the clouds of a gas giant (very unlikely, I know, but follow me), the mention of rivers and oceans, of deserts, volcanoes, plate tectonic, glaciers and forests would be unconceivable. What I mean is that the surface of neutron stars might produce a lot of small «geographic» features and «weather» events that we have absolutely no way to imagine.
There's a joke among historians and archaeologists that if the meaning of an object has been lost to time, they claim it was "for ritual purposes" because they have no idea what it really is. I'm starting to think astrophysicists just say "maybe it's a magnetar" about anything that doesn't make sense to them.
I love how excited you get talking about observations that don't fit into our established understanding of the universe. I've dealt with so many people whose favorite words when talking about science are "But we _know..."_ that your "We _don't_ know (yet) and that's exciting!" is like a breath of fresh air. Reminds me of the excitement I get as a software engineer when I'm in the middle of debugging a particularly challenging issue.
Okay, I love how you answered one of the questions I saw in the comments on your last video by incorporating that into the overall video. I think a lot of people skip more traditional comment responses (whether in video or in replies), but having that info in the video makes sure everyone gets it. And it only took 15-20s! (This is about the field of view question, and why we need dedicated observing tools for surveys.)
My understanding is that magnetars are basically neutron stars that haven't really gotten their pulsar "game" going yet, the magnetar phase lasts perhaps 10kyear before they "settle" into being a regular pulsar. I got this from a post-doc studying pulsars, magnetars, and FRBs.
I'm a carpenter, and I read that as FRP at first, making me think "why in the hell did he study fiberglass reinforced panels?" 😂 Edit: btw, I do need new glasses...
Yeah though even in that picture it isn't a simple age progression since not all neutron stars go through Magnetar phases since none of the known young core collapse supernovae neutron star remnants show magnetar like behavior and a number of magnetars are found in weird places without young star formation like globular clusters. They do appear to generally be found in crowded places so stellar collisions are probably an important prerequisite since some of those massive merger products have extreme magnetic fields. As for what seem to be likely progenitors for magnetars it's probably the extreme magnetic field merger remnants such like Ap stars and or exotic transients such as WD J005311 WD J005311 while a fast rotating object and thus not the type of object discussed here is a fascinating future neutron star candidate object as it appears to be a super Chandrasekhar white dwarf like object which is a double degenerate type merger product of an aborted or rather restabilized Ia supernovae from an ONe and CO white dwarf binary inspiral that produced a product just borderline massive enough with the right combined carbon to heavier element ratios to have been able to reestablish hydrostatic equilibrium rather than completely blowing itself up. This star is found at the center of IRAS 00500+6713 which has been identified as the remnant of SN 1181 a type Iax supernovae and there are some indications that the star has extreme magnetic fields which already border on the typical range of neutron stars. This reignited stellar object has only a limited amount of fuel to support its weight and so is expected to at some point in the next 10,000 years to undergo further collapse into a neutron star via an under luminous type Ic core collapse supernovae. The point why I'm bringing up this object is that while the possibility of such a star was predicted by theory the odds of such an event occurring were believed to small to catch this transient phase in action yet alone within our own galaxy a mere 3 KPC away in Cassiopeia. This along with the other discovered exotic weird stars suggests that this sort of stellar binary inspiral collision is much more common than had been previously assumed. Magnetars if they are remnants of such collisions thus would fit the bill and be potentially numerous enough to account for this oddity.
I am thinking that it's got an eccentric wobble so that, despite firing rapidly, it only does so in a detectable direction every 54 minutes. Virtually every stellar object has a built-in wobble. Why can't a pulsar?
@@charlesanthony3248 interesting proposition, but precession isn't a constant, but a variable. We are dealing with a constant, repetitive action at predictable intervals which would tend to eliminate precession. Although, since physics, even QUANTUM physics, breaks down within the gravity well of neutron stars and black holes, virtually anything is possible
@@TonyM1961It’s only been constant over the relatively brief period that we’ve been observing it. Hopefully its signals have been recorded by other instruments looking for other things far enough in the past that we can say for sure that it is indeed constant over longer time scales. If it wasn’t, that can reveal other details about its nature. For instance pulsar spin rates are known to undergo rapid jumps due to surface “star quakes” which alter their angular momentum. If it hasn’t been constant over longer time scales, knowing how it changed is important.
I love your content. I was also a Chinook flight engineer and still work on them as a mechanic. This is not the crossover I was expecting, but I love it.
This channel is a bug reason I got interested in astronomy and it is completely crazy to me that I get to work on long-period magnetars at the same time that this channel releases a video about it. Thank you Dr. Becky!!
Perhaps it precesses while spinning at a normal rate for a pulsar, sweeping the beam past us at a slower rate than the spin. The torque for the precession could be supplied by any ordinary binary companion. Although that does not describe the variability. Just a thought from an amateur.
3:54 to 4:12, "keeping an eye on all of them and discovering new ones is incredibly hard..."; I thought this was a smooth transition into an Ad for the new Space Ground News! :)) Another great episode DrBecky!
A wondering: neutron stars and magnetars are remnants of shortlived supergiants, burning out in just some million years. This means that these remnants, around 15-100 times heavier than the Sun, should be extremely abundant in the universe and keep quite a lot of the original mass. Since these stars send out both heat, light, and radio emissions, they should grow colder with time. The question is, how long before they go "black", similar to rough planets, hard for us to see? Notably, the Milky Way has had relatively few supernovas since the mid-1800s, but others, like the Firework Galaxy, have had a multitude of them at the same time. At the same time, novas are not linear, they increases when interstellar clouds get affected by gravity. Therefore, the second question is, how can man, theoretically, estimate how many "dead" neutron stars and magnetars linger in a galaxy, creating invisible gravity effects. Effects we account to dark matter? Likely not all of it, but can these burnt-out carcasses be ignored?
00:35 - a teaspoon of neutron star matter would *briefly* weigh that much, without the pressure to keep the neutrons in the compact form it would become "less dense", "rapidly" (combined with the energetics of neutron->proton decomposition)
That interests me. I was thinking if you put a teaspoon into a neutron star, it would probably turn into neutrons pretty quickly itself. Could you point me in the direction of further information about what happens if neutron star material were liberated?
@@jeremywilliams5107 look into the after effects of a "kilonova" this is one of the most violent things that happen in the universe. 2 Neutron stars collide, and the energy the emit is amazing. Most of the radiation is from neutron decay to protons, and most gold and other similar elements in the universe is created this way.
Could you make a video about how something made of neutrons has a magnetic field? My super basic understanding of magnets has them requiring electrons...
I do love the outtakes at the end, you sound just like me when I'm grumbling 😂 Love the explanations too, just pitched at the right level ❤ Have you done an episode to explain the different star types (white dwafs vs red giants vs magnatars etc) and how they are formed?
Dr. Becky, thank you for sharing your enthusiasm about this weird new thing you found in the sky the whole world loves your enthusiasm. Have a good day.
I come for the awesome info from an awesome person, but I stay for the bloopers at the end of the videos. Never fails to get a full belly laugh out of me.
Dr. Becky if rotation is slow maybe there's something in the central density that's slowing rotation such as a massive diamond or other object. It could also be a burp of sorts that was within the manifold of rotation that might be causing rotation to slow. Is there any definitive info that goes back in time? Daniel J Blatecky USA
I have learned much on your channel. I had a moment thinking 'maybe the star is in an orbit with a black hole and that's why the period is so slow. Then I realized it would need to be so close the black hole would be taking layers from the neutron star and therefore we would see the feeding in infra red, or even visible light. Thank you for giving me this knowledge!
@DrBecky What about a pulsar of some sort that is spinning on 3 axis with different rotation rates? It can be stable and generate different signal types because sometimes it will be pointed at us and the spin on another axis can turn the pulses away from us and even catch us in between some some of the middle strength signals.
Absolutely love it, thank you. More so because a question on pulsars came up in A-Level physics paper 3. Regarding magnetars: would you be able to do a video about them? I'm relatively new to your channel so if you have already done one please direct me to it.
Is it possible that it's actually a fairly normal pulsar but something else is affecting whether it's pulses get through to us and how much. Maybe a rotating dust cloud that has a gap in it? Alternatively, if the pulsar's rotation axis is off, wouldn't that mean that only 1-in-N pulses face us? I think you said that each pulse lasts longer than normal, is this proportional to the low frequency within expected bounds? (this would distinguish between slow rotation vs 1-in-N getting through)
Stellar remnant collision? Low mass neutron star and low mass white dwarf collision with opposite rotational vectors and a possible grazing collision to slow down final spin even more? Final mass still low enough to remain a neutron star?
Could you have situation with a pulsar (of either sort) accreting material that offset it's own rotation? My first thought was a merger, but the number of coincidence you need to so nearly cancel the pulsar's motion doesn't seem plausible.
I may have misheard, but if ASKAP looks at 30° square and the full moon is 0.2° square then ASKAP fov is 150x150 full moons, which is 22,500 full moons not 150 (which is what I heard)
Thank you for sharing your perspective on yet another mysterious and exciting object being discovered by all the new telescopes. It's so helpful to get a serious analysis of what it means and what questions it raises.
Love your blooper where you wish for a six five blue eyed pulsar! It is pretty rare that it is hotter anywhere in England than the PNW! In all my visits there, the weather has been pretty tame. Even boring.
Off-center close binary neutron stars? The pole of one, in this case, would be aimed in the plane of the orbit. The closeness would explain the period approximation. And the pulses are when the orbit-plane pole reflects off the companion. Reasons: Short duration orbit binaries have been found; allows a sub-hour orbit. Post-supernova poles don't have to retain original orientation; allows for a bright signal on a long period due to reflection rather than direct beam. And surface discrepancies on companion could explain brightness variability. Alternately, pole 1 of the beam star is orbit-aimed due to some "kick", pole 2 is off-pole and grazing companion on opposite side, and the orbit is wider. An advantage is that only 1 pole needs a specific angle or range of angles. A sticking point would be "what caused the orbit-plane pole star to flip 90 degrees?".
Hi Dr. Becky, I love your work! Your show has opened my eyes to a lot of astronomy learning. I have a suggestion of reaching out to the main authors e.g. Manisha Caleb at USYD. I am not sure of the etiquette amongst the astronomers, but I suspect I would want to webinar in with you for 5+ min if I was the author. Also, good to see the ASKAP producing some results. I was fortunate enough to write up some of their patents on the core receiver technology some years ago.
Absolutely fascinating find. I still think it is a White Dwarf that got somehow "ejected" from whatever made it spin but there is still residual material falling on it, making it pulse.
There was an astronaught that showed what happens when an unbalanced weight object is spinning. It spins fine for a bit, but then then axis suddenly reverses. Could an unstable axis be a solution to the slowest spin as it flips?
Does spin of a dense object have to be one dimensional, i.e., around one axis? What if that axis is also rotating (precession?) around another axis but much slower? That would mean that we would miss the 'beam' most of the time, but once in a while, like 54 min., the pulsar beam would pass Earth. Some hits would be dead on, and some on the fringes, and sometimes would miss us until the next round, making the beam seem to change between instances.
I'm not sure i understand the geometry involved here. If we're seeing something pulse because of it's spin, does that mean we'll only see it if the plane of the spin is horizonal to the direction we're looking at it from, and if the plane of the spin is perpendicular to us we won't see it at all? If so, is it possible that this pulsar 's actually spinning as fast as any other, but also that the plane of the spin is rotating relative to us, so that we only pick up the regular pulses once every 54 minutes?
Dr Becky, is it possible that this neutron star is orbiting very close to a low mass black hole...close enough that our (relativistic) observations of the pulse period is being stretched by the space-time warp of the black hole? That would explain the unusually long pulse period and perhaps some of the variability (huge gravity-driven magnetic field "tides"). A black hole (depending on our orientation to the system's orbital plane) may be directly obscuring (capturing) our observations of the pulses...
I have some ideas as to what this object could be: 1. A neutron star under formation. Presumably it's just collapsed and perhaps there is matter around it going super fast which would explain why it hasn't inherited all of the star's kinetic energy. 2. A neutron star and a very heavy planet (say comparable to the star itself) orbiting each other. 3. A neutron star orbiting a dwarf star (a star that failed basically)
Pikachu is Becky's video.amazing🎉Ah, a fellow pokemon and a black hole fan, I see!! Just a curious fact, there's actually a pokemon called Gardevior for which the description says that it can create small black holes.
Oh, sorry for that inconvenicene, I was moving around some pulsars to redecorate my local spacetime for a birthday party, didn't realize if I used one as a beacon on the back of my space bunny it would shine towards habitated planets... I'll make sure to turn it off next time I'm home, sadly I'm a few billion megaparsecs out, so you guys will have to put up with it for a while... You know, space bunnies are so skittish, they fly in perfect circles until they find a rogue planet to chase and simply run off... I thought that putting a pulsar as a beacon on mine might be a good idea to find it, if it did run off while I was travelling. I think I'm just going to get a cat, if you could spare one, though, if that's okay with you? Oh, and do you take intergalactic credits, if you decide to let me buy one? [slow transfer message]
If it's close enough we can see it's size; would be possible to analyze the light passing near it for signs of birefrigence and other exotic effects a magnetar would have to determine whether it is a magnetar?
Is it possible for stars to spin in multiple axes? 🤔 (Resulting in the ‘lighthouse’-angle to rotate as well so we only get a pulse every 54 minutes when it lines up with earth again?)
What is the theoretical minimum spin rate of a neutron star? I’ve never heard of this, so there’s no reason to forbid one out of hand. This could be a very, very old neutron star that has dissipated much of its rotation energy over a long time.
@@michaelsommers2356 has the most likely explanation. That's why the authors posit it could be a magnetar: they have very strong magnetic fields, hence slow down more quickly (through magnetic dipole radiation)
Dr Becky, could the red shift values be incorrect because light is travelling further than the actual distance between us and the object, due to the light travelling along the gravitational waves or ripples of space-time? I need answers, someone scientifically validate or shut down this idea please.
Could the variability in the pulses be due to an exaggerated wobble in the stars axis? I.e. it wobbles much like the Earth but through a greater degree of magnitude over a much shorter time period!
Playing a bit of occams razor. Couldn't it just have a wobbly spin? So it's not slow just only points at us every 54 minutes. Was that explored in the paper?
Interesting if it is a Neutron star I wonder if this could be the result of spin canceling in a merger of two compact objects? Mergers between several heavy and or carbon poor white dwarf stellar remnant cores can lead to compact neutron stars after all.
It’s Digby messing with the key fob again, looking for his lost Nibblonian space ship. He and Nibbler really need to quit drinking. Somebody find a synthesizer and a good set of speakers 😉
Please, I'm a little puzzled. You said the patch of sky the ASKAP was looking at was 30 square degrees. Should that have been a 30 degrees square? Thank you for the superb shows. I have been a space geek since I was a youngster, and since I'm in my seventies, that's a few years of geekness.
Since the disk so far can't be resolved, why do astronomers assume very high spin? Neutron and White Dwarf star seem to be so dense you might want to call them solid stars. If the 'solid stars' exist, might it be possible to have some kind of semiconductor properties through these star causing some kind of 'strobe' circuit between boundary layers causing pulses?
Dr Becky, i do have to ask concerning our observations of space.....have we ACTUALLY mapped the observable universe, OR, are most of the image of the observable universe, photo shopped, to indicate how we THINK everything is evenly spread? I am assuming to much is merely photo shopped with assumptions but for instance........the galaxy, HD1......?we haven't observed a sphere of space out that far have we?.......?we are making the assumption that the universe is homogeneous and isotropic?
Any multi-body arrangements that might explain this? Two neutron stars in a binary system with different periods that happen to line up every 50 minutes for a while?
Perhaps the original star span incredibly slowly, meaning when it 'shrank' its period was still only 54 minutes. There must be a simple formula to estimate how fast a suitable size star would have rotated before it went supernova. Or perhaps many of the pulses miss Earth's direction and the star is wobbling but then we'd expect the gyroscopic effect of the spin to stop wobbles I suppose?
Pardon my ignorance for this question, because I'm sure you would have mentioned it if it was even a possibility, but could the star that collapsed into the neutron star have just been rotating unusually slowly to begin with? So even though its rotation speed would have increased when it turned into a neutron star, it still would have been rotating relatively slowly? Or maybe the star has to be spinning fast already to turn into a neutron star or something like that which would preclude the scenario?
Need a star about 10-25 times the mass of the sun to make a neutron star and it will collapse into something the size of New York City. The skater goes from arms out for a total of 6 feet in diameter to arms in at 3 feet in diameter and you can see how much that little bit speeds up her rotation rate. You can even test it for yourself with a ball and a long string. Swing the ball around your head with the string at maximum then reel in about half the string and swing it around again.
I understand that it would be spinning considerably faster, but what if it was barely rotating at all before? Is there a reason the star would definitely have a significant rotation before collapsing into a neutron star?
@@Adallace Stars with "normal" rotational speeds (the sun rotates once every 27 days) become pulsars with rotation speeds of 1000 times per second. A star that produces a neutron star with a 54 hour rotation speed would be moving so slowly pre-super nova you wouldn't be able to tell it was rotating. If it had planets or a companion star (most stars are in binary pairs) just the orbital tugs would cause it to spin much faster than once every 54 hours after supernova.
Could ASKAP J1935+2148 actually be a phenomena acting as a Relaxation Oscillator ? If it operates in variable environmental conditions, that could alter the variations observed.
![The Insane Science of Neutron Stars [4K]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qX6h72IyKSo/mqdefault.jpg)
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Even Dust and wind can become Stars and planets
I heard that plane a bit but generally I never hear those noises you're always complaining about. It must be distracting for you though. I'm with you on detesting loud bikes and cars. So awful
I'm kind of interested in that site after more than one channel I follow has mentioned it. @DrBecky have you really tried it and it's actually good? Or has anyone else reading this actually tried it themselves? Seems potentially useful to find higher quality news. I don't like that a few major news corporations dominate most news feeds including TH-cam and their products are mostly entertainment rather than news.
We have idealized idea or model of what neutron stars and white dwarves are but for an alien creature coming from the clouds of a gas giant (very unlikely, I know, but follow me), the mention of rivers and oceans, of deserts, volcanoes, plate tectonic, glaciers and forests would be unconceivable.
What I mean is that the surface of neutron stars might produce a lot of small «geographic» features and «weather» events that we have absolutely no way to imagine.
@Adallace I use it. It is quite good, but you need to adjust your preferences. I like it :)
Some giant spaceship forgot to turn its blinker off.
his next turn near magellanic cloud
C-beams. That is a clue.
I hate following them when they do that...always wondering which galaxy they are going to turn
😂😂😂
😂😂😂
Petition to call this new object Blinky instead, its proper name is pretty awkward.
blinky mcblinkface
@@martinrowland2593a man of culture, I see
blinkit
"I'm looking for a slow spinning pulsar, 6'5" blue eyessss" 🤣🤣🤣 that killed me
There's a joke among historians and archaeologists that if the meaning of an object has been lost to time, they claim it was "for ritual purposes" because they have no idea what it really is.
I'm starting to think astrophysicists just say "maybe it's a magnetar" about anything that doesn't make sense to them.
It’s also never aliens.
@carlharding5311
Dr. House: Aliens are the Lupus of Astrophysics. It's never Lupus, and strange periodicity Neutron Stars are never Aliens. 🤓🐶
I love how excited you get talking about observations that don't fit into our established understanding of the universe. I've dealt with so many people whose favorite words when talking about science are "But we _know..."_ that your "We _don't_ know (yet) and that's exciting!" is like a breath of fresh air. Reminds me of the excitement I get as a software engineer when I'm in the middle of debugging a particularly challenging issue.
Okay, I love how you answered one of the questions I saw in the comments on your last video by incorporating that into the overall video. I think a lot of people skip more traditional comment responses (whether in video or in replies), but having that info in the video makes sure everyone gets it. And it only took 15-20s! (This is about the field of view question, and why we need dedicated observing tools for surveys.)
My understanding is that magnetars are basically neutron stars that haven't really gotten their pulsar "game" going yet, the magnetar phase lasts perhaps 10kyear before they "settle" into being a regular pulsar. I got this from a post-doc studying pulsars, magnetars, and FRBs.
I'm a carpenter, and I read that as FRP at first, making me think "why in the hell did he study fiberglass reinforced panels?" 😂
Edit: btw, I do need new glasses...
Yeah though even in that picture it isn't a simple age progression since not all neutron stars go through Magnetar phases since none of the known young core collapse supernovae neutron star remnants show magnetar like behavior and a number of magnetars are found in weird places without young star formation like globular clusters. They do appear to generally be found in crowded places so stellar collisions are probably an important prerequisite since some of those massive merger products have extreme magnetic fields.
As for what seem to be likely progenitors for magnetars it's probably the extreme magnetic field merger remnants such like Ap stars and or exotic transients such as WD J005311
WD J005311 while a fast rotating object and thus not the type of object discussed here is a fascinating future neutron star candidate object as it appears to be a super Chandrasekhar white dwarf like object which is a double degenerate type merger product of an aborted or rather restabilized Ia supernovae from an ONe and CO white dwarf binary inspiral that produced a product just borderline massive enough with the right combined carbon to heavier element ratios to have been able to reestablish hydrostatic equilibrium rather than completely blowing itself up. This star is found at the center of IRAS 00500+6713 which has been identified as the remnant of SN 1181 a type Iax supernovae and there are some indications that the star has extreme magnetic fields which already border on the typical range of neutron stars. This reignited stellar object has only a limited amount of fuel to support its weight and so is expected to at some point in the next 10,000 years to undergo further collapse into a neutron star via an under luminous type Ic core collapse supernovae. The point why I'm bringing up this object is that while the possibility of such a star was predicted by theory the odds of such an event occurring were believed to small to catch this transient phase in action yet alone within our own galaxy a mere 3 KPC away in Cassiopeia.
This along with the other discovered exotic weird stars suggests that this sort of stellar binary inspiral collision is much more common than had been previously assumed. Magnetars if they are remnants of such collisions thus would fit the bill and be potentially numerous enough to account for this oddity.
Citation, please?
"Looking for a slow spinning pulsar, six five, blue eyes". Nearly spat my coffee all over my computer screen🤣
As a Chilean astronomer, I love that you pronounce Chile as a native, and not as "chili" 💖
I was told to pronounce it “Chee-lay” Is that correct? It clearly doesn’t say “Chilli or Chilly” lol.
@@SeauxNOLALady yes, I think that's correct! :D Yes, that's why I was commenting, that she didn't say "chilli" as the spicy pepper haha
Just wanna say that for all the sponsorships I've seen for Ground News, you're the one that got me to subscribe.
That graph at 6:56 gives me unknown pleasure.
Joy division album cover
@@markpinsker3121 It's a graph of the first pulsar discovered, at Arecibo btw, which was then used as an album cover.
Landing radar from the first _Alien_
Pleasure(s) 😉
What a great album 🥰
@@takanara7 nuh uh! Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell discoverd it using the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory. That's in Cambridge England.
Didn’t know pulsars were 6’5” with blue eyes (12:25). Learn something new everyday.
I am thinking that it's got an eccentric wobble so that, despite firing rapidly, it only does so in a detectable direction every 54 minutes. Virtually every stellar object has a built-in wobble. Why can't a pulsar?
I was thinking precession.
@@charlesanthony3248 interesting proposition, but precession isn't a constant, but a variable. We are dealing with a constant, repetitive action at predictable intervals which would tend to eliminate precession. Although, since physics, even QUANTUM physics, breaks down within the gravity well of neutron stars and black holes, virtually anything is possible
It most definitely just wobbles
@@TonyM1961It’s only been constant over the relatively brief period that we’ve been observing it. Hopefully its signals have been recorded by other instruments looking for other things far enough in the past that we can say for sure that it is indeed constant over longer time scales.
If it wasn’t, that can reveal other details about its nature. For instance pulsar spin rates are known to undergo rapid jumps due to surface “star quakes” which alter their angular momentum. If it hasn’t been constant over longer time scales, knowing how it changed is important.
because a neutron star is fantastically perfectly round and homogeneous. Gravity wave analysis has shown us that.
I love your content. I was also a Chinook flight engineer and still work on them as a mechanic. This is not the crossover I was expecting, but I love it.
MeerKAT is my new favourite telescope name. I can just picture it perched on a hillock, constantly scanning its surroundings for ... things.
This channel is a bug reason I got interested in astronomy and it is completely crazy to me that I get to work on long-period magnetars at the same time that this channel releases a video about it. Thank you Dr. Becky!!
@6:57 that makes a cool album cover!
Very, very similar to the Joy Division album.
Perhaps it precesses while spinning at a normal rate for a pulsar, sweeping the beam past us at a slower rate than the spin.
The torque for the precession could be supplied by any ordinary binary companion. Although that does not describe the variability. Just a thought from an amateur.
7:00 and now you know what was the inspiration for Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures album cover art
I’m sure it’s not a coincidence as both Dr. Becky and Joy Division are from Manchester.
yep almost an exact copy of that particular plot
3:54 to 4:12, "keeping an eye on all of them and discovering new ones is incredibly hard..."; I thought this was a smooth transition into an Ad for the new Space Ground News! :))
Another great episode DrBecky!
Yess new space stuff from becky!
Love the last audio clip at the very end, well done Dr. Becky.
*"I'm not saying it's Aliens 👽 but, it's definitely Aliens, Ancient Aliens!"*
16,000 year old aliens?
A wondering: neutron stars and magnetars are remnants of shortlived supergiants, burning out in just some million years. This means that these remnants, around 15-100 times heavier than the Sun, should be extremely abundant in the universe and keep quite a lot of the original mass. Since these stars send out both heat, light, and radio emissions, they should grow colder with time. The question is, how long before they go "black", similar to rough planets, hard for us to see? Notably, the Milky Way has had relatively few supernovas since the mid-1800s, but others, like the Firework Galaxy, have had a multitude of them at the same time. At the same time, novas are not linear, they increases when interstellar clouds get affected by gravity. Therefore, the second question is, how can man, theoretically, estimate how many "dead" neutron stars and magnetars linger in a galaxy, creating invisible gravity effects. Effects we account to dark matter? Likely not all of it, but can these burnt-out carcasses be ignored?
Dr Becky upload = me getting a snack and settling in for some science
00:35 - a teaspoon of neutron star matter would *briefly* weigh that much, without the pressure to keep the neutrons in the compact form it would become "less dense", "rapidly" (combined with the energetics of neutron->proton decomposition)
That interests me. I was thinking if you put a teaspoon into a neutron star, it would probably turn into neutrons pretty quickly itself. Could you point me in the direction of further information about what happens if neutron star material were liberated?
@@jeremywilliams5107 look into the after effects of a "kilonova" this is one of the most violent things that happen in the universe. 2 Neutron stars collide, and the energy the emit is amazing. Most of the radiation is from neutron decay to protons, and most gold and other similar elements in the universe is created this way.
7:02 that plot actually looks really cool.
Like line art for mountains.
Could you make a video about how something made of neutrons has a magnetic field? My super basic understanding of magnets has them requiring electrons...
What if it is spinning really fast and we are detecting its precession?
Mandatory Joy Division reference for mention of pulsars. 😂
Love the nail polish
I thought you meant on the pulsar! I had to go back and check.
Matching earrings
Your LEGO car sets are fabulous!!
I do love the outtakes at the end, you sound just like me when I'm grumbling 😂
Love the explanations too, just pitched at the right level ❤
Have you done an episode to explain the different star types (white dwafs vs red giants vs magnatars etc) and how they are formed?
Nice car collection on the book shelf! And plants growing in the chemistry set 🤣
brilliant as always, thanks Dr Becky.
Dr. Becky, thank you for sharing your enthusiasm about this weird new thing you found in the sky the whole world loves your enthusiasm. Have a good day.
I come for the awesome info from an awesome person, but I stay for the bloopers at the end of the videos. Never fails to get a full belly laugh out of me.
Dr. Becky if rotation is slow maybe there's something in the central density that's slowing rotation such as a massive diamond or other object. It could also be a burp of sorts that was within the manifold of rotation that might be causing rotation to slow. Is there any definitive info that goes back in time? Daniel J Blatecky USA
I have learned much on your channel. I had a moment thinking 'maybe the star is in an orbit with a black hole and that's why the period is so slow. Then I realized it would need to be so close the black hole would be taking layers from the neutron star and therefore we would see the feeding in infra red, or even visible light. Thank you for giving me this knowledge!
@DrBecky What about a pulsar of some sort that is spinning on 3 axis with different rotation rates?
It can be stable and generate different signal types because sometimes it will be pointed at us and the spin on another axis can turn the pulses away from us and even catch us in between some some of the middle strength signals.
Not only was this very interesting (as expected!), but that was one of the funniest blooper segments in a while. Dr. Becky gets miffed!
Absolutely love it, thank you.
More so because a question on pulsars came up in A-Level physics paper 3.
Regarding magnetars: would you be able to do a video about them? I'm relatively new to your channel so if you have already done one please direct me to it.
Is it possible that it's actually a fairly normal pulsar but something else is affecting whether it's pulses get through to us and how much.
Maybe a rotating dust cloud that has a gap in it?
Alternatively, if the pulsar's rotation axis is off, wouldn't that mean that only 1-in-N pulses face us?
I think you said that each pulse lasts longer than normal, is this proportional to the low frequency within expected bounds? (this would distinguish between slow rotation vs 1-in-N getting through)
Thanks so much for creating and sharing this informative video. Great job. Keep it up.
Stellar remnant collision? Low mass neutron star and low mass white dwarf collision with opposite rotational vectors and a possible grazing collision to slow down final spin even more? Final mass still low enough to remain a neutron star?
Could you have situation with a pulsar (of either sort) accreting material that offset it's own rotation? My first thought was a merger, but the number of coincidence you need to so nearly cancel the pulsar's motion doesn't seem plausible.
Fascinating! Thanks, dr. Becky! 😊
Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
I may have misheard, but if ASKAP looks at 30° square and the full moon is 0.2° square then ASKAP fov is 150x150 full moons, which is 22,500 full moons not 150 (which is what I heard)
Field of view is 30 degrees squared, full moon is 0.2 degrees squared so that is 30/0.2=150 full moons. It is not 30 degrees x 30 degrees.
Thank you for sharing your perspective on yet another mysterious and exciting object being discovered by all the new telescopes. It's so helpful to get a serious analysis of what it means and what questions it raises.
Love your blooper where you wish for a six five blue eyed pulsar!
It is pretty rare that it is hotter anywhere in England than the PNW! In all my visits there, the weather has been pretty tame. Even boring.
could lensing have something to do with it as in something powerful interrupting the pulses ??
Off-center close binary neutron stars? The pole of one, in this case, would be aimed in the plane of the orbit. The closeness would explain the period approximation. And the pulses are when the orbit-plane pole reflects off the companion.
Reasons: Short duration orbit binaries have been found; allows a sub-hour orbit. Post-supernova poles don't have to retain original orientation; allows for a bright signal on a long period due to reflection rather than direct beam. And surface discrepancies on companion could explain brightness variability.
Alternately, pole 1 of the beam star is orbit-aimed due to some "kick", pole 2 is off-pole and grazing companion on opposite side, and the orbit is wider.
An advantage is that only 1 pole needs a specific angle or range of angles. A sticking point would be "what caused the orbit-plane pole star to flip 90 degrees?".
Hi Dr. Becky, I love your work! Your show has opened my eyes to a lot of astronomy learning. I have a suggestion of reaching out to the main authors e.g. Manisha Caleb at USYD. I am not sure of the etiquette amongst the astronomers, but I suspect I would want to webinar in with you for 5+ min if I was the author. Also, good to see the ASKAP producing some results. I was fortunate enough to write up some of their patents on the core receiver technology some years ago.
Absolutely fascinating find. I still think it is a White Dwarf that got somehow "ejected" from whatever made it spin but there is still residual material falling on it, making it pulse.
That was deffintly not a Chinnock helicopter, their sound is a double whoosh..
I learn something new every time I watch one of your videos. My top learning point for this one is that there’s actually a Meerkat Telescope in SA
LOL The Pokemon had me dyinggg.
There was an astronaught that showed what happens when an unbalanced weight object is spinning. It spins fine for a bit, but then then axis suddenly reverses. Could an unstable axis be a solution to the slowest spin as it flips?
Does spin of a dense object have to be one dimensional, i.e., around one axis? What if that axis is also rotating (precession?) around another axis but much slower? That would mean that we would miss the 'beam' most of the time, but once in a while, like 54 min., the pulsar beam would pass Earth. Some hits would be dead on, and some on the fringes, and sometimes would miss us until the next round, making the beam seem to change between instances.
Thank you! I now understand how/why pulsars spin so fast! It's about conservation of angular momentum!
Fascinating episode and beautifullt explained as always
I'm not sure i understand the geometry involved here. If we're seeing something pulse because of it's spin, does that mean we'll only see it if the plane of the spin is horizonal to the direction we're looking at it from, and if the plane of the spin is perpendicular to us we won't see it at all? If so, is it possible that this pulsar 's actually spinning as fast as any other, but also that the plane of the spin is rotating relative to us, so that we only pick up the regular pulses once every 54 minutes?
Wow! Totally informative episode 👍👍👍👍
Dr Becky, is it possible that this neutron star is orbiting very close to a low mass black hole...close enough that our (relativistic) observations of the pulse period is being stretched by the space-time warp of the black hole? That would explain the unusually long pulse period and perhaps some of the variability (huge gravity-driven magnetic field "tides"). A black hole (depending on our orientation to the system's orbital plane) may be directly obscuring (capturing) our observations of the pulses...
Would it be plausible that th pulsar is heavely tumbling so you woul messure first bursts from one pole than nothing then the other pole and so on?
I have some ideas as to what this object could be:
1. A neutron star under formation. Presumably it's just collapsed and perhaps there is matter around it going super fast which would explain why it hasn't inherited all of the star's kinetic energy.
2. A neutron star and a very heavy planet (say comparable to the star itself) orbiting each other.
3. A neutron star orbiting a dwarf star (a star that failed basically)
Finaly someone spotted the Tardis.
And The Doctor is still riding the hand brake.
Pikachu is Becky's video.amazing🎉Ah, a fellow pokemon and a black hole fan, I see!! Just a curious fact, there's actually a pokemon called Gardevior for which the description says that it can create small black holes.
Oh, sorry for that inconvenicene, I was moving around some pulsars to redecorate my local spacetime for a birthday party, didn't realize if I used one as a beacon on the back of my space bunny it would shine towards habitated planets... I'll make sure to turn it off next time I'm home, sadly I'm a few billion megaparsecs out, so you guys will have to put up with it for a while... You know, space bunnies are so skittish, they fly in perfect circles until they find a rogue planet to chase and simply run off... I thought that putting a pulsar as a beacon on mine might be a good idea to find it, if it did run off while I was travelling. I think I'm just going to get a cat, if you could spare one, though, if that's okay with you? Oh, and do you take intergalactic credits, if you decide to let me buy one?
[slow transfer message]
Thank you for the super interesting video! If it's a neutron star, it's gonna be quite a game changer.
Absolutely fascinating star but side note love the nail polish definitely want details on it and no I don’t normally take note of this stuff
If it's close enough we can see it's size; would be possible to analyze the light passing near it for signs of birefrigence and other exotic effects a magnetar would have to determine whether it is a magnetar?
Neutron star circumference is about the size of the city of New York. No chance of seeing as a disk with any of our current telescopes.
@@soaringeagle5418 Oh, I misunderstood what she said in the video then...
Is it possible for stars to spin in multiple axes? 🤔 (Resulting in the ‘lighthouse’-angle to rotate as well so we only get a pulse every 54 minutes when it lines up with earth again?)
Does the frequency of the emitted photons vary with the size of the neutron star?
What is the theoretical minimum spin rate of a neutron star? I’ve never heard of this, so there’s no reason to forbid one out of hand. This could be a very, very old neutron star that has dissipated much of its rotation energy over a long time.
If two stars that happened to be spinning in different, mostly opposite directions collided, this would be a natural result.
@@tomholroyd7519 that’s a good idea
Depends on the mass of the original star and how fast it was rotating when it went supernova.
If a pulsar slows down too much, it stops being a pulsar. I don't know how slow that would be.
@@michaelsommers2356 has the most likely explanation. That's why the authors posit it could be a magnetar: they have very strong magnetic fields, hence slow down more quickly (through magnetic dipole radiation)
Dr Becky, could the red shift values be incorrect because light is travelling further than the actual distance between us and the object, due to the light travelling along the gravitational waves or ripples of space-time? I need answers, someone scientifically validate or shut down this idea please.
Could the variability in the pulses be due to an exaggerated wobble in the stars axis? I.e. it wobbles much like the Earth but through a greater degree of magnitude over a much shorter time period!
Is this something that will be added to the pulsar timing array? Or are these not precise enough?
Well, considering it only blinks sometimes... probably not
The pulsar timing array used very precice pulsers.
Playing a bit of occams razor. Couldn't it just have a wobbly spin? So it's not slow just only points at us every 54 minutes. Was that explored in the paper?
Interesting if it is a Neutron star I wonder if this could be the result of spin canceling in a merger of two compact objects? Mergers between several heavy and or carbon poor white dwarf stellar remnant cores can lead to compact neutron stars after all.
A third idea I had, is a rapid precession with the effect that at times we get into the cone of the radio signal, then again not...
Love the video, also, “chinook” sounds like “shuh-nuk”.
It’s Digby messing with the key fob again, looking for his lost Nibblonian space ship. He and Nibbler really need to quit drinking.
Somebody find a synthesizer and a good set of speakers 😉
¿Is it possible for a neutron start rotation to slow down due to a companion star up to the point of pulsing at that low frequency?
Pulsar spin rates do slow down, but very, very slowly, and not due to companions.
Please, I'm a little puzzled. You said the patch of sky the ASKAP was looking at was 30 square degrees. Should that have been a 30 degrees square? Thank you for the superb shows. I have been a space geek since I was a youngster, and since I'm in my seventies, that's a few years of geekness.
Yep, you're correct, it's about 30 square degrees, roughly 5.5^2 square degrees
It's great to see that clip of Becky demonstrating her ice skating prowess again. It's a clever spin on things and clearly demonstrates the principle.
Since the disk so far can't be resolved, why do astronomers assume very high spin? Neutron and White Dwarf star seem to be so dense you might want to call them solid stars. If the 'solid stars' exist, might it be possible to have some kind of semiconductor properties through these star causing some kind of 'strobe' circuit between boundary layers causing pulses?
Dr Becky, i do have to ask
concerning our observations of space.....have we ACTUALLY mapped the observable universe, OR, are most of the image of the observable universe, photo shopped, to indicate how we THINK everything is evenly spread?
I am assuming to much is merely photo shopped with assumptions
but for instance........the galaxy, HD1......?we haven't observed a sphere of space out that far have we?.......?we are making the assumption that the universe is homogeneous and isotropic?
Er, Dr B, what is a "square degree across"?
"Across" has dimension length not area.
Any multi-body arrangements that might explain this? Two neutron stars in a binary system with different periods that happen to line up every 50 minutes for a while?
what would it be like to be on a planet that's orbiting a pulsar and the pulse hits the planet?
How long /slow can waveforms move?
Perhaps the original star span incredibly slowly, meaning when it 'shrank' its period was still only 54 minutes. There must be a simple formula to estimate how fast a suitable size star would have rotated before it went supernova. Or perhaps many of the pulses miss Earth's direction and the star is wobbling but then we'd expect the gyroscopic effect of the spin to stop wobbles I suppose?
Not sure which is cooler. This astronomical object, or that nail polish. OMG that's pretty!
Pardon my ignorance for this question, because I'm sure you would have mentioned it if it was even a possibility, but could the star that collapsed into the neutron star have just been rotating unusually slowly to begin with? So even though its rotation speed would have increased when it turned into a neutron star, it still would have been rotating relatively slowly?
Or maybe the star has to be spinning fast already to turn into a neutron star or something like that which would preclude the scenario?
Need a star about 10-25 times the mass of the sun to make a neutron star and it will collapse into something the size of New York City. The skater goes from arms out for a total of 6 feet in diameter to arms in at 3 feet in diameter and you can see how much that little bit speeds up her rotation rate. You can even test it for yourself with a ball and a long string. Swing the ball around your head with the string at maximum then reel in about half the string and swing it around again.
I understand that it would be spinning considerably faster, but what if it was barely rotating at all before? Is there a reason the star would definitely have a significant rotation before collapsing into a neutron star?
@@Adallace Stars with "normal" rotational speeds (the sun rotates once every 27 days) become pulsars with rotation speeds of 1000 times per second. A star that produces a neutron star with a 54 hour rotation speed would be moving so slowly pre-super nova you wouldn't be able to tell it was rotating. If it had planets or a companion star (most stars are in binary pairs) just the orbital tugs would cause it to spin much faster than once every 54 hours after supernova.
Could ASKAP J1935+2148 actually be a phenomena acting as a Relaxation Oscillator ? If it operates in variable environmental conditions, that could alter the variations observed.
Can we get an update on the Hubble tension? Was it resolved or made worse by the JWST data? Which paper is proving more correct?
Wait? something else that's weird in astrophysics? Nooooo! Lol
Love your work Dr Becky 👍
Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.