February 20, 2014

With A Deadly Embrace, 'Spidery' Pulsars Consume Their Mates

Black widow spiders and their Australian cousins, known as redbacks, are notorious for their tainted love, expressed as an unsettling tendency to kill and devour their male partners. Astronomers have noted similar behavior among two rare breeds of binary system that contain rapidly spinning neutron stars, also known as pulsars.

Image - Illustration of black widow pulsar blasting material off companion star — Spinning 390 times a second, PSR J1311−3430 periodically swings its radio (green) and gamma-ray (magenta) beams past Earth in this artist's concept. The pulsar heats the facing side of its stellar partner to temperatures twice as hot as the sun's surface and slowly evaporates it. (NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)

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With A Deadly Embrace, 'Spidery' Pulsars Consume Their Mates

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