Neutron Stars---Pulsars

"We discussed how certain massive stars will use up their nuclear fuel and the ensuing gravitational collapse that results will trigger a supernova, leaving behind a stellar remnant known as a "neutron star." This time around, we are going to discuss "pulsars". They were first observed on November 28, 1967 by Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish. For a short time, some people thought it was a form of galactic communications from an extraterrestrial civilization. 

A pulsar is a highly magnetized neutron star that emits electromagnetic radiation from its magnetic poles, while it spins with great speed from its rotational axis. Charged particles moving along the magnetic field is what causes a beam of radiation to be emitted from the magnetic axis. The magnetic axis and spin axis are in two very different locations, so when they rotate, it would seem like a pulsating lighthouse from a distant region in space. Each pulse is made up of radio waves with different frequencies, much the same way white light is made up of all of the color frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. 

But why does it spin? Astronomers say it's because of the conservation of angular momentum before the supernova went into action. To put it more simply, if you take a large object with a slight spin, compress it down to a smaller object, watch as the rotation speeds up. Pulsars can spin 20 times a second while others will undergo hundred rotations per second, but that is not the only reason these objects spin so fast. Some pulsars are in fact, traveling through space 4,000 times faster than a jumbo jet. 

Regular pulsars, in general, can last for 10 million to 100 million years. Although there's a certain type of pulsar that is known to outlast the "ordinary" ones. They are known as "millisecond pulsars." When a companion star (perhaps a red giant) gets close enough to a regular pulsar, the pulsar will then absorb its material into the form of a disk which surrounds itself. The transfer of materials also transfers into the momentum, which increases the rotation speed. The fastest one (that we know so far) can rotate over 700 times per second. Another fascinating detail is that millisecond pulsars can last over hundreds of billions of years or possibly forever (when it devours material from neighboring stars)

P.S. the youngest pulsars (when I say "young", I mean by a few thousand years old) can be found in a nebula, the remnants of a supernova. In other words, within every stellar grave site, you may find a "resurrected" object in a state unlike its former self, moving through space beyond its time.