What evidence do we have that pulsars are neutron stars?

What will be an ideal response?


Pulsars could not be ordinary stars. A normal star, even a small white dwarf, is much too big to pulse that fast. Nor could a star with a hot spot on its surface spin fast enough to produce the pulses. Even a small white dwarf would fly apart if it spun 30 times a second. The pulses last only about 0.001 second, placing an upper limit on the size of the object producing the pulse. If a white dwarf blinked on and then off in that interval, you would not see a 0.001-second pulse. That's because the point on the white dwarf closest to Earth would be about 6000 km closer to you, and light from that spot would arrive 0.02 s before the light from the bulk of the white dwarf. As a result its short blink would be smeared out into a longer pulse. Only a neutron star is small enough to be a pulsar.

Physics & Space Science

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Fill in the blank(s) with correct word

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Photons are emitted when a bound electron jumps up to a(n) ________ energy state

A) lower B) higher C) zero D) infinite

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At the microscopic level, the difference between gases and liquids is that

A) the gas's atoms move throughout the gas, while the liquid's atoms remain near their original locations. B) in a gas, the individual atoms are larger. C) there is much more distance [at least 10 times more] between neighboring atoms in a gas than between neighboring atoms in a liquid. D) both answers A and B are correct. E) both answers B and C are correct.

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When a rigid object rotates about a fixed axis, what is true about all the points in the object? (There could be more than one correct choice.)

A) They all have the same angular speed. B) They all have the same tangential speed. C) They all have the same angular acceleration. D) They all have the same tangential acceleration. E) They all have the same radial acceleration.

Physics & Space Science