Pulsars could have tiny mountains

Imagine a star so dense as a teaspoon of its material would weigh as much as Mount Everest, turning hundreds of times per second while radiating radio waves through the universe. These are pulsars, the collapsed nuclei of massive stars. Some pulsars break the rules of physics as we understand them, and the answer could reside in something as simple as tiny mountains on their surfaces.

Scientists have long known that pulsars should possibly “die” when they turn too much to generate the powerful electric fields necessary to produce radio waves. This border, called the “death line”, a mark where a pulsar should be silent forever and, well, stop pulling! However, a team of researchers discovered pulsars who are very lively despite being well below this theoretical limit.

Two particularly confusing examples are PSR J0250 + 5854 and PSR J2144-3933. These pulsars should be radio and radio according to current models, but they continue to pass the signals through space. Until now, scientists could not explain how these “dead” pulsars have been pulsating.

New research from the University of Beijing suggest that the answer could be surprisingly simple: tiny mountains on the surface of the pulsar. These are not mountains as we know them on earth; They are probably not more than a centimeter, almost the height of your nail. But on a neutron star, where severity is 100 billion times stronger than that of the earth, even such small characteristics can have dramatic effects.

The researchers led by ZI-HAO XU of the University of Beijing have developed sophisticated computer models to understand how these miniature mountains would affect powerful electric fields around pulsars. They found that the steep slopes of these tiny peaks considerably amplify the local electric field, which facilitates the pulsar to accelerate particles and generate the cascades of electrons and positrons which create radio waves. Their study is published in the arxiv pre -printed server.

Think about it as if to concentrate sunlight with a magnifying glass; The curved surface of the mountain concentrates the electric field in a much more powerful beam. This amplification can reduce the energy threshold necessary to trigger radio emissions in half or more, effectively bringing back pulsars “dead” to life. They also provide clues to the really made neutron stars, one of the greatest unresolved mysteries in physics. For the mountains to survive the surface of a neutron star, the material must be incredibly strong. The intense bombing of high energy particles would quickly erode any ordinary question.

Researchers propose that neutron stars can be made of “strange matter”, an exotic form of matter linked by high nuclear force rather than electromagnetic forces. This material would be difficult enough to maintain the surface characteristics compared to the extreme environment of the neutron star, with liaison energies of millions of times stronger than ordinary matter.

This research opens up new fascinating possibilities to understand neutron stars and test fundamental physics. If the surface mountains are common on pulsars, astronomers should be able to detect their effects by meticulous observations of patterns of synchronization and impulse intensity. The next rapid Chinese telescope, for example, can be able to identify the revealing signatures of these tiny peaks.

The work also suggests that “neutron problems”, sudden changes in rotation speed, could be connected to the formation or destruction of the surface mountains during quisors. This could provide a new way of studying the internal structure of these exotic objects.