{"id":745459,"date":"2026-07-05T23:53:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T23:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/745459\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T23:53:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T23:53:10","slug":"cosmically-curious-why-pulsars-are-the-lighthouses-of-the-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/745459\/","title":{"rendered":"Cosmically Curious: Why pulsars are the lighthouses of the universe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nicole Gugliucci, astronomy professor at Saint Anselm College, explains how pulsars work, and how we discovered them to Cosmically Curious host Patrick McNameeKing.<\/p>\n<p>    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"Image\" alt=\"The &quot;lighthouse&quot; effect from a pulsar, when the radiation emitting off is visible to Earth\"  width=\"880\" height=\"662\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/.gif\"\/><\/p>\n<p>     The &#8220;lighthouse&#8221; effect from a pulsar, when the radiation emitting off is visible to Earth<\/p>\n<p>What is a pulsar?<\/p>\n<p>A pulsar is the collapsed, zombie-like core of a massive star that died in a supernova explosion.<\/p>\n<p>What is it made of?<\/p>\n<p>The core consists almost entirely of neutrons packed so tightly that the density exceeds that of atomic nuclei.<\/p>\n<p>Do pulsars move?<\/p>\n<p>Yes, their magnetic axes are typically misaligned with their rotation axes, causing beams of electromagnetic radiation to sweep out across space like a lighthouse. Earth-based observers can see a pulsed signal when the beams point toward us.<\/p>\n<p>How fast do they spin?<\/p>\n<p>Pulsars spin incredibly fast, up to a 1000th of a second per rotation.<\/p>\n<p>Stars form from a cloud of gas, which has some very tiny internal spin to it, and as these massive stars collapse, they leave behind a remnant that spins faster and faster as it collapses.<\/p>\n<p>Gugliucci says it&#8217;s like an ice skater who&#8217;s spinning with their arms out, and when they pull their arms in, the spinning speeds up.<\/p>\n<p>How big is a pulsar?<\/p>\n<p>A pulsar has a diameter of only about 20 kilometers (12 miles) but retains a mass roughly 1.35 times that of the sun.<\/p>\n<p>Have a question about the night sky or space exploration? Send an email to the team at\u00a0cosmic@npr.org.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nicole Gugliucci, astronomy professor at Saint Anselm College, explains how pulsars work, and how we discovered them to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":745460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[79,193],"class_list":["post-745459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/745460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}