Your Next Clock Could Be A Pulsar
Thursday, June 24, 2010 - 16:01
in Astronomy & Space
An international team of scientists say a new technique could turn pulsars into superbly accurate time-keepers. A pulsar is the spinning, collapsed core of a massive star that ended in a supernova explosion and was first discovered in 1967. A pulsar weighs more than our Sun but can be the size of New York City and produces beams of radio waves which sweep around the sky hundreds of times a second. Radio telescopes receive a regular train of pulses as the beam repeatedly crosses the Earth so that the object is observed as a pulsating radio signal. read more