New light shed on Pulsar puzzle

[astroron (Ron)]

The one thing I noticed in this article was the changes in the pulsar over what in astronomy is a very short time
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8062005.stm?a

[erick (Eric)]

It gets an article today in ABC Online.

Local astronomer makes a big statement:-

"Dr Bryan Gaensler, an astronomer from the University of Sydney, says when millisecond pulsars were first discovered in the 1980's one group put together a "ridiculously contrived, convoluted, ad-hoc chain of arguments" of how they might be born.


" "At the time most people thought 'yeah right'," says Gaensler. "Remarkably every step in the sequence has been born out."


"Gaensler says this discovery demonstrates that because the universe is so big and there are so many stars, anything that is possible, no matter how ridiculously improbable, is going to happen somewhere."





All crazy theories are welcome for testing, folks!

[DJDD]

great article. thanks, ron.

imagine capturing this event as it happens, all in the space of 9 years. "Stellar" evolution on human timescales... I think it is bigger news than some of the other (recent) announcements made to much fanfare.

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

With billions of stars out there, I suppose it's got to happen sometime, glad it was caught. Hope more unexplained phenomenom can be detected in a short time frame and solve some more mysteries.