C A L L I N G P U L S A R S C I E N C E ST R A N G E M I G H T B E

T H E M O ST AC C U R AT E STAT E M E N T I N A ST RO N O MY.

TA K I N G T H E P U L S E
BY STEPHEN M. MAURER

Four views of the Crab Nebula. From far left, the

radio, optical, infrared, and X-ray images reveal
starkly different views of the famous supernova
remnant in Taurus. At the center of the nebula is a
rapidly rotating neutron star (seen most clearly in
X-rays). The various wavebands indicate the energy
of the outflow particles produced by the pulsar,
with the radio image highlighting the oldest and
least energetic particles. The X-ray scene features
the youngest, highest-energy emission and thus
shows the most detail. Radio image courtesy
VLA/NRAO. Optical: Palomar Observatory. Infrared:
W. M. Keck Observatory. X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO.
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August 2001 Sky & Telescope

n 1930 Caltech astronomer Walter Baade made one of

the 20th centurys most significant discoveries while
searching through a bunch of old photographs. Baade
had been working on violent stellar explosions called
novae. He knew these events occur in our galaxy and was
intrigued by records suggesting that an outburst had been seen
in the Andromeda Galaxy 45 years before. Andromeda was 2
million light-years away, so distant that any ordinary nova
would be too dim to detect. Was there some mistake? Rummaging through Mount Wilsons 30-year-old photographic plates,
Baade soon found more extragalactic novae objects he called
supernovae. In order to be seen at such distances, these blasts
had to be brighter than 100 million Suns. What was going on?
Together with his colleague Fritz Zwicky, Baade set out to
determine how such explosions were possible. What would
happen, they asked, if a Sun-size star somehow fell inward
upon itself? In principle the physics were no different from
those of a collapsing skyscraper. However, a star could release
the energy needed to power a supernova only if it kept on collapsing until it was much smaller than a white dwarf. This result was a paradox; the new science of quantum mechanics

2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

O F N E U T R O N S TA R S
said that stars made from protons and electrons the only
subatomic particles known at the time couldnt get denser
than these Earth-size stellar remnants.
Baade and Zwicky asked their question at just the right time.
In 1932 English scientist James Chadwick discovered an uncharged version of the proton called a neutron. Two years later
Baade and Zwicky published an article speculating that a star
made entirely of neutrons would achieve a very small radius
and extremely high density. In principle, a star that collapsed
to form a dense ball of neutrons only tens of kilometers across
could easily release enough energy to light up a supernova.
For the next three decades research slowed to a crawl. Neutron stars stayed in the realm of theory nobody had ever
seen one, nor did anyone know exactly what to look for. That
changed in 1967 when Cambridge University astronomers Jocelyn Bell and Antony Hewish discovered a new class of rapidly
blinking radio sources. Because these so-called pulsars kept
phenomenally accurate time, scientists reasoned that they must
be tied to some kind of massive flywheel, and the only flywheel
heavy enough was a rotating star (S&T: July 1999, page 30).
There was just one catch: pulsars rotated so fast that any ordi-

nary star would be torn apart. Fortunately, gravity gets stronger

at short distances. If pulsars were extraordinarily small and
dense they could hold together. Pulsars had to be neutron stars.
Anatomy of a Neutron Star
Motivated by the discovery of these stellar oddballs, physicists set
out to understand them in detail. Fortunately, early observations
suggested that the core of a neutron star is only a few times
denser than an atomic nucleus. This meant that scientists could
apply Earth-based physics experiments to these distant stars.
When Baade and Zwicky published their idea in 1934, scientists knew about only three subatomic particles: protons, electrons, and the recently discovered neutrons. By the end of the
1950s, atom smashers had extended the list to hundreds.
Among the new particles was a complicated family called hyperons, which resembled neutrons and protons.
Physicists soon devised a new theory to tame this subatomic
zoo. The Standard Model, as it is known, says that neutrons
and protons are made from still smaller particles called up and
down quarks. Hyperons also contain ups and downs, along
with a third type called strange.

2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Sky & Telescope August 2001

33

11 11
10 10

S & T ILLUSTRATION

Strange
matter

Solid iron crust

barrie
lec tro n

radius
(kilometers)

Ordinary matter
(protons, neutrons,
electrons)
Quark matter

In one model of a neutron stars composition (right), conventional

physics produces a gradual transition from ordinary matter (protons,
neutrons, and electrons) to quark matter (a bloblike substance made
from unusual combinations of quarks). On the surface is an iron crust.
Below that are superfluid neutrons and other particles that gradually
give way to quark matter as depth and pressure increase. A pure
quark-matter core is at the center. A second possible composition
(left) also begins with a hard iron crust. But in this case the interior is
filled with a hypothetical substance called strange matter. Although
strange matter absorbs any ordinary matter it touches, powerful electric fields levitate the stars iron crust so that it is safely out of reach.

The modern picture of a neutron star traces the history of

physics like a series of tree rings. At the surface, 19th-century
physics governs. For the first few hundred meters, the neutron
star has a crust made of solid iron. This is because iron is the
end product of nuclear fusion. Since stars cannot burn iron to
produce energy, they leave it behind as ash.
Beneath the crust, things get complicated. For the first two
to three kilometers, 1930s physics Baade and Zwickys ball
of neutrons works pretty well. But deeper still, 21st-century
physics takes over. The typical neutron star becomes a complicated mix of neutrons, protons, and electrons. Within three
kilometers of the core, some physicists speculate that the density gets so high that the intense pressure forms hyperons. On
Earth hyperons are found only in particle accelerators and
high-energy cosmic rays. Near the center of a neutron star hyperons may be the most common form of matter.

34

August 2001 Sky & Telescope

Glitches, Starquakes, and Superfluid Twisters

A pulsars pulses are normally more regular than the ticks of a
good Swiss watch. In fact, astronomers needed atomic clocks
to find out that pulsars arent perfect they gradually slow
down over their lifetimes. Nevertheless, most pulsars also go
through erratic episodes called glitches. These come without
warning, when the normally dependable pulsar abruptly starts to
tick faster. After a glitch, the pulsars ticks slow down again. After
several months, the pulsar once again regains its Swiss accuracy.
At first, physicists thought that glitches occur when the neutron stars iron crust cracks, buckles, and collapses like a giant
version of the San Andreas fault. (The word giant is appropriate: a typical starquake would measure magnitude 22 on the
Richter scale!) That kind of collapse would make the star spin
faster in the same way that ice skaters accelerate by pulling in
their arms. The problem with this theory is that starquakes are
supposedly caused by strains that accumulate in the crust as
the pulsar slows down over many thousands of years. In reality, hardly any pulsars wait that long: most have glitches every
few years.
In the early 1970s, Richard Packard (University of California, Berkeley) and Philip Anderson (Princeton University) independently suggested that glitches were actually caused by
another phenomenon first explored in the 1930s. In 1937
physicists discovered that a handful of very low temperature
liquids can actually flow without viscosity or friction. Set one
of these superfluids spinning, and it never stops. In the laboratory, rotating superfluids organize themselves into striking
geometric patterns of whirlpool-like vortexes. The rotation
around each vortex is exactly the same and zero everywhere
else. Although common in the subatomic world, this quantized
behavior is hardly ever seen in macroscopic systems. Physicists
believe that the subatomic soup inside a neutron star is also a
superfluid. As evidence, they cite the debris from atom smashers, in which nuclei splatter like fluids with zero viscosity.
Early studies revealed that the number of vortexes in a superfluid grows and their geometric patterns change as the container holding them spins faster. Experiments with superfluid
helium show that some vortexes can linger long after the container slows down. Packard and Anderson argued that the
same thing happens in neutron stars, but the superfluid interior eventually restores equilibrium by destroying the excess vortexes and transferring their rotation into the crust. Unlike the
earlier starquake theory, the Packard-Anderson model explains
how pulsars can undergo glitches every few years.
Vortexes in the laboratory. Each of the photographs is a combination
of 60 consecutive movie frames. Beginning at far left, the container of
superfluid helium forms increasingly complicated patterns as its rotation speed increases from 0.47 to 0.93 revolution per second. Similar
vortexes may occur in neutron stars. Courtesy Richard Packard.

2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

S&T ILLUSTRATION

Quark star life span

Strange star life span

When a star ends its life in a supernova and becomes a neutron star, there are two possible outcomes. In both the star cools, radiates its rotational energy into space, slows down, and eventually stops producing radio waves after about 10 million years. In one scenario (top) the neutron star forms quark matter as it ages a process that causes the star to shrink and spin faster. This process goes on for 100,000 years before
the star stops making quark matter and begins to slow down again. In the second scenario (bottom) the supernova collapse produces strange
matter. Strange stars have smaller radii and spin faster than ordinary pulsars.
Soviet physicists produced this hand-drawn
graph when they created the first-ever laboratory-scale pulsar glitches in 1974. The experiment used metal shells filled with liquid helium.

Packard also predicted that glitches could be made in the laboratory. Soviet experimenters proved him right in 1974 when
they detected Packard events using a super-cooled heliumfilled sphere. Of course, real neutron-star glitches are far more
violent than any tabletop experiment. Unlike laboratory superfluids, a rapidly spinning pulsar can easily contain thousands of
vortexes per square centimeter. Whereas lab-scale glitches destroy
a few hundred vortexes at a time, a typical neutron-star glitch
destroys billions or even trillions of vortexes.
Quark Stars and Strange Stars
According to the Standard Model, protons, neutrons, and hundreds of others particles made in accelerators are composed of
quarks, the basic building blocks of ordinary matter. Most
physicists stretch the term ordinary matter to include bizarre
particles like hyperons that exist only inside atom smashers.
The Standard Model also predicts that quarks can form new
types of matter. Experimentally, physicists have never seen a particle that contains more than three quarks. Practically everything
in the known universe is made from the two lightest quarks

J. S. TSAKADZE, S. J. TSAKADZE

up and down. However, theory says that the third type of quark
strange should form at high densities. Once this happens,
unlimited numbers of quarks can bond together. For this reason,
most theorists think that the dense cores of massive neutron
stars contain a bizarre souplike substance called quark matter.
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory theorist Norman Glendenning explains that the transition from ordinary particles to
quark matter occurs gradually. At relatively low pressure,
quark matter likely forms an array of droplets inside an ocean

Below: A typical glitch as seen in the Vela pulsar. After a sudden acceleration in spin, the pulsar resumes its gradual slowdown. Right: the
Vela pulsar (arrowed) as imaged by the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Period (seconds)

0.0892581

0.0892583

NASA / PSU / G. PAVLOV

Pulsar
Glitch

0.0892579

SOURCE: LYNE & GRAHAM-SMITH, PULSAR ASTRONOMY

0.0892577

0.0892585

Sept.

Oct.

Nov. 1981

2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Sky & Telescope August 2001

35

eutron stars arent the only place

where new types of ultradense
matter could lead to a runaway
chain reaction. Some scientists worry about
the Earth. So far, most of the attention has
involved heavy-ion accelerators that smash
massive nuclei together. Because the debris
from such collisions is especially dense,
physicists use these atom smashers to
search for new types of matter.
During the 1970s, a physicist visiting
Californias Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
warned that a planned heavy-ion experiment might create a substance that, like
strange matter, would gobble up everything it touched. After a series of closeddoor meetings, lab managers allowed the
experiment to proceed.
Similar concerns were raised in 1984. This
time, a scholar at Princetons Institute for
Advanced Study warned that some pro-

posed new heavyion accelerators might create baby universes that would expand
outward at the speed of light.
By far the biggest incident happened in
1999. That summer, the Sunday Times of
London ran an article asking whether
Brookhaven National Laboratorys $600
million Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
(RHIC) built to make quark matter
could lead to the end of the world by
producing strange matter instead. Already reeling from a recent groundwater
scandal, the lab responded with a comprehensive report explaining why there
was no chance that any phenomenon
produced by RHIC will lead to disaster.
RHIC ultimately went ahead as planned.
In each of these cases, the decision to
proceed was based on the argument that
Earth has already survived for eons. Dur-

of ordinary matter. As pressures increase, the individual

droplets grow and merge together into long rods, which then
combine to form sheets. At extreme pressure, the sheets join
together, and ordinary matter becomes the minority substance.
Meanwhile, the ordinary matter shrinks to sheets, then rods,
then droplets. Eventually, only quark matter remains.
Beyond quark matter lies an even weirder possibility. According to the standard model, a large bubble of quark matter
may actually have less energy than the ordinary matter that
surrounds it. Thus, a newly formed pulsar could shed additional energy by turning some of its up and down quarks into
strange ones. The resulting chain reaction would go on producing strange matter until the entire star was consumed. If
true, most of the objects that astronomers call neutron stars
are actually strange stars. (See the box above.)
Some physicists argue that strange stars cant exist because pulsars cant keep accurate time without a rigid iron crust to act as a
flywheel; a strange-matter crust is far too flexible to make a good
clock. On the other hand, Glendenning points out that strange
matter would probably be surrounded by strong electric fields.
Near the stars surface where pressures are low this barrier
should insulate the hard iron crust and keep it from becoming
strange. With an intact hard outer shell, the clock remains precise.
Searching for Quark Matter
Over time, even the fastest pulsars lose their rotational energy and
slow down. When this happens, centrifugal force falls and internal
36

August 2001 Sky & Telescope

ing that time,

interstellar collisions
have probably delivered neutron-star debris to our planet with no ill
effects. Furthermore, scientists studying
cosmic rays have already observed heavy
nuclei nearly as energetic as the ones produced by RHIC. That said, some scientists
still find the theoretical possibility of
strange matter slightly disconcerting. As
physicist John Nelson (Birmingham University) told the Times, The big question
is whether the planet will disappear in the
twinkling of an eye. It is astonishingly unlikely that there is any risk but I could
not prove it.

pressures start to rise. Eventually, pressures reach the point where

quark matter can form. Since quark matter tends to be soft, the
star compresses even further and spins faster. For a brief period, the pulsar stops slowing down and may even spin faster.
According to Glendenning, the average pulsar forms quark
matter for roughly 150 of its total lifetime as an active radio
source. If so, an astronomer who sets out to monitor 100 pulsars
should catch one or two during the telltale timespan when the
slowdown reverses. So far, only four pulsars have been examined
for this effect; many more will be studied over the next 10 years.
One straightforward piece of evidence for strange stars
would be a submillisecond pulsar. Currently, the fastest known
pulsar is PSR B1937+21, which rotates once every 1.56 milliseconds. This is tantalizingly close to the fastest rate any neutron star made from ordinary matter can spin without flying
apart. Finding even one pulsar with a slightly higher rotation
period say, 0.3 millisecond faster would prove that some
type of quark matter exists.
Until recently most pulsar surveys did not have the right
equipment to detect such rapid rotators. Newer surveys should
do better. For example, Australias Parkes telescope has recently
begun using a fast sampling machine specifically designed to
detect submillisecond signals. Similarly, the Arecibo radio telescope was upgraded to work at frequencies where the interstellar medium is less likely to blur closely spaced signals. Like
Parkes, Arecibo is also building its own fast sampling machine.
So far, astronomers have learned most of what they know

2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

HEADLINE FROM JULY 18, 1999, LONDON SUNDAY TIMES

STRANGE
D O O M S D AY S

NAIC / CORNELL UNIVERSITY

DAVID PARKER

The giant U.S. radio telescope at Arecibo (left) was recently upgraded with a new high-frequency feedhorn that operates from 1.7 to 3 gigahertz (right). The new instrument is just one of the many improvements made at Arecibo in order to search for submillisecond pulsars.

about neutron stars from radio telescopes. But pulsars also emit
X-rays, and NASAs Chandra X-Ray Observatory is the first orbiting telescope sensitive enough to distinguish pulsar surfaces
from surrounding gas and noise. This lets astronomers measure
pulsar temperatures directly; Chandras data should allow astronomers to estimate how fast neutron stars cool off.
Gordon Baym (University of Illinois) believes X-ray studies
of neutron-star cooling will open a new window on pulsar
physics. Because photons take a long time to diffuse out of

Se
pt
M emb
Oc
ar
ch er 1
to
be
30 6,
r6
, 1 19
,1
99 99
99
9
6

NASA AND F. M. WALTER (SUNY STONY BROOK)

The Hubble Space Telescope took this composite image of neutron

star RX J1856353754 as it shot across the heavens between 1996
and 1999. This neutron star, the one nearest Earth, is only 200 lightyears away. The object is traveling at approximately 389,000 kilometers per hour with a proper motion of 13 arcsecond per year.

dense matter, neutron stars mostly cool by releasing neutrinos

and antineutrinos that escape almost immediately. The catch is
that the same reactions that produce neutrinos and antineutrinos also leave behind neutrons and protons as waste
products. Such reactions get suppressed in ordinary matter
because most of the energy states for neutrons and protons are
already occupied. Thus stars that contain quark matter should
cool much faster than their conventional counterparts.
Among X-ray sources, Quasi-Periodic Oscillators, or QPOs,
are of particular interest. Like pulsars, QPOs announce their
presence via a series of repeating flashes. However, QPOs flash
at irregular intervals. Astronomers suspect they arise in binary
systems when a neutron star accretes hot gas from a normalstar companion. The gas forms a disk, orbiting in ever-tighter
spirals until it finally plunges onto the neutron stars surface.
The fluctuating QPO signal probably comes from the disks inside edge, where the gas is hottest.
Knowing the position of the edge sets an upper limit on the
neutron stars radius. And knowing how long it takes gas to
complete an orbit reveals the stars mass. From this information, astronomers can compute the stars minimum density.
Since quark matter is soft and compressible, objects made
from it should be significantly denser than those made from
ordinary matter. Even though the theory remains somewhat
controversial, studies of QPOs may one day lead to the unambiguous identification of a quark star.
Today neutron-star research lives on. The search for a
strange submillisecond pulsar continues, and astronomers are
now studying neutron stars across a wide range of wavelengths.
Physicists still arent sure exactly what neutron stars are made
of. Almost 70 years after Baade and Zwicky predicted them,
neutron stars continue to amaze.
Stephen M. Maurer is a San Franciscobased freelance journalist.
His articles have appeared in Nature and Science.

2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Sky & Telescope August 2001

37