Astronomers have discovered the fastest-spinning pulsar. The star rotates at speeds previously thought impossible.
Frank Marshall, Will Zhang and Eric Gotthelf from the Goddard Space Flight Center, and John Middleditch of Los Alamos National Laboratory found the star by studying data from NASA’s Rossi X-Ray satellite. They have calculated that the star is spinning over 60 times per second, twice as fast as any previously known pulsar. The pulsar is suspected to be connected with supernova remnant N157B in the Large Magellanic Cloud, 170, 000 light years from Earth. This explosion occurred 4, 000 years ago and the pulsar could have been spinning at 150 times per second when it was formed. This discovery confirms a prediction by Gotthelf and Wang of Northwestern University that a link exists between fast spinning pulsars with weak magnetic fields, and slow-spinning pulsars with strong fields.
