Am Bonner Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, a project was launched in 2009, at least 500 ne

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E-mail: njunkes@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de
A quick success celebrates the team was only founded in 2009 "Radio Astronomical Fundamental Physics" dope couture at the Bonn Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy. Only a few weeks after the start of a pulsar search program at the 100-m telescope in Effelsberg, the researchers have now been able to prove their first millisecond pulsar. The object carries the provisional designation PSR J1745 +10, was found at the position of a discovered with the space observatory Fermi gamma-ray point source and seems to be just about to evaporate its companion star.
Pulsars are neutron stars that arise as supernovae dope couture in the explosion of massive suns. These stars reflect along their magnetic poles from bundled radio emission. Because the magnetic axis is inclined to the rotation dope couture axis of the radiation cone sweeps once per revolution of the earth, that is, the star flashes regularly as a lighthouse. To this date, about 2000 pulsars, most of which were discovered by using radio telescopes.
With a rotation dope couture period of typically less than ten milliseconds, dope couture some of these pulsars have very high speed. In addition, dope couture "tick" it extremely precise: Your rotational stability can be compared to the transition of the most accurate atomic clocks. These objects are so-called dope couture recycled pulsars - ie neutron stars that have initially very slowly rotated about its own axis, but were then accelerated almost 1,000 times in its rotation by the flow of matter from a companion star. At the end of this process is a binary star system consisting of a millisecond pulsar and a white dwarf.
The PSR J1745 +10 now found object is a particularly fast-rotating pulsar rotates in only 2.65 milliseconds once around its axis. "That's almost 23,000 revolutions per minute, which is significantly more than the engine of a Formula 1 race car," said Lucas Guillemot, Fermi scientists in the Bonn group. The neutron star and its companion move in less than 18 hours around the common dope couture center of gravity.
The companion appears to be extremely dope couture light and be among the roughly 20 known systems in which the mass of the pulsar partner is only a few hundredths of a solar mass. Therefore, the researchers suggest that high-energy dope couture radiation of the pulsar is completely evaporate the companion with time. "Black Widow" is what the astronomers, appropriately, such a neutron star. "This is almost a little ungrateful, because the companion has only brought the millisecond pulsar by the mass transfer at high rotational speeds," says Michael Kramer, head of the new research department. "After the complete dope couture evaporation of the partner of the pulsar continues to exist as a single star."
Am Bonner Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, a project was launched in 2009, at least 500 new pulsars to be discovered dope couture with the. The researchers are pursuing two strategies. The first is a so-called All-Sky Survey, dope couture for which the 100-meter radio telescope scans the entire northern sky at a wavelength of 21 centimeters. The receiver as well as the connected dope couture instrument developed at the Institute, they can watch with high time resolution seven adjacent positions in the firmament.
The amount of data that must be searched for pulsar signals, provides dope couture for even advanced computer systems a daunting challenge given work the scientists in close collaboration with their colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics solutions, such as with the project " Einstein @ Home "can achieve the necessary computing capacity.
A major goal of this project is to find a sufficient number dope couture of millisecond pulsars, through the direct detection of gravitational waves is possible. This wave-like distortion of the space which is to lead small variations in the arrival times of pulsar signals dope couture which should be detectable dope couture using the largest available radio telescopes on earth. To this end, Bruce Allen, director of a