Triple millisecond pulsar laboratory challenges theory
Monday, January 6, 2014 - 11:00
in Astronomy & Space
(Phys.org) —Millisecond pulsars are old neutron stars, which rotate several hundred times per second. They are often found in binary systems and their existence can be explained by mass transfer from a companion star. The recent discovery of a millisecond pulsar orbited by two white dwarfs (Ransom et al., 2014) comes as a surprise and challenges current theories of their formation. The astrophysicists Ed van den Heuvel of the University of Amsterdam and Thomas Tauris from Bonn have developed a semi-analytical model which can resolve the intriguing formation of this unique triple system.