Boffins baffled over pulsar with 'split personality'

A pulsar that randomly and without warning dramatically changes its pattern of radio wave and X-ray emissions has surprised a team of astronomers, who wrote that it "challenges all proposed pulsar emission theories". A pulsar with glowing cones of radiation Pulsars are spinning neutron stars the size of a small city, with a …

[Miguel Farah]

What if there are TWO pulsars?

And these two are close together and transit over each other?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some

Some alien nerd sitting in his bedroom on a nearby planet messing with pulsars to confuse the Universe.

[haloburn]

Re: Some

Power source for a type 3 civilisation

[Tom Chiverton 1]

Do aliens use morse ?

[Chemist]

dash dot dash dash dash

[Anonymous Coward]

Your fist sucks, man

.-- .... . .-. . ... - .... . .. -. - . .-. .-.. . - - . .-. --. .- .--. - .... . .-. . .. - ... -. --- - .- .--. .-. --- ... .. --. -. ..--..

-. ---

hihi

[Martin Huizing]

Re: Your fist sucks, man: But Charmap rules!

–•–– ––– ••– / •– •–• • / ••• – ••– •––• •• –•• / •• ••–• / –•–– ––– ••– / –•–• •– –• / •–• • •– –•• / – •••• •• •••

Go to: http://morsecode.scphillips.com/jtranslator.html for translation!

[Silverburn]

"The behaviour of this pulsar is quite startling, it’s as if it has two distinct personalities,

I promised myself I wouldn't go there...but I will:

...does this behaviour appear to change regularly on an almost monthly basis...?

The brown one. Quickly. I have to run.

[Anonymous Coward]

Think... electricity.

[Filippo]

C'tan communication?

[kyza]

Malfunctioning power source...

...for some alien superweapon.

Pulsars are the discarded magazine clips of the Vl'Hurg Imperium.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: Malfunctioning power source...

> clips

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Malfunctioning power source...

Bored pedant here. It's either a magazine or a clip. I have never heard of a magazine clip.

[MadChemist]

Re: Malfunctioning power source...

Well... I hate to disagree, but then again, English is not my native language.

Also, I am aware that clips are used to load magazines, and that the terms are used interchangeably, though technically incorrectly, particularly in the FPS gaming crowd.

However, there are variants of "clip", such as a money clip, video clip, paper clip, battery clip, alligator clip... need I go on? Thus, most clips I come across have nothing to do with guns - in fact, I have only ever seen pictures of a (cartridge) clip. A magazine clip in the context of weaponry - space based or otherwise - would no doubt refer to a clip intended to load a magazine.

[ElNumbre]

Trans-Warp Conduit

The Trans-warp conduits emit different signals based upon if something is passing into, or out of, the aperture.

Maybe?

[Tom 7]

Sounds like its still eating its partner

It there's a lot of gas still circling around it from time to time a cloud of it will be pulled in and crash into the surface releasing xrays and at the same time blocking the radio emissions.

[jubtastic1]

"Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology"

-Paul Daniels

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the Cheela SETI project

It's the Cheela SETI project, sending out a signal to anybody listening.

It's a very long-term project - it's been running for hours!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheela

[Robert E A Harvey]

Quadrature Amplitude Modulation

Someone is sending cat pictures to another galaxy

[Anonymous Coward]

Obvious innit?

It means scientists don't understand *everything*

Therefore they don't know anything.

= It is proof of God's existence.

(copyright @pontifex)

[Chemist]

Re: Obvious innit?

Surely

Yours _infallibly@pontifex

[Psyx]

I for one...

...welcome our ultra-dense overlords.

Oh, too late; they've already filled parliament.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well

There is a theory that life (but not as we know it) might be able to evolve on the surface of neutron stars.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: Well

That was "Dragon's Egg" I think. A jolly good read, indeed.

[bag o' spanners]

A pint for your thoughts.

Is it possible that its output wavelength is oscillating from gamma to x-ray spectra and back? Overmodulation of the output signal, for whatever wibbly cosmic yoyo reason, might be creating a funky meandering square wave that's defining what we can record from our limited perspective with our primitive earth technology..

Alternatively, wouldn't it only require huge pulses of intense x-ray to mask the visible gamma frequencies, or vice versa? I'm sure some of those fancyarse disco lights use similar trickery in the visible spectrum..

I can't help thinking of it as an early Moog star with oscillators that randomly drift in and out of tune.

[HelpfulJohn]

Cheela do.

Or at least did, or will for a time a few years from now when the "Dragon Slayer" teaches them the great game of Civilisation. Dr. Forward's aliens wouldn't be using "morse" now as we haven't gone there to lift them up.

Of course there's a chance these new aliens living on the neutron star uplifted themselves. That would be ever so cool.

I wonder if they'd even see planets like ours? Or would they zip by in a rush to get to other "Goldilocks" stars on the other side of what they would consider useless Sol?

Neutron-star alien Galactic Empire next week?

[Anonymous Coward]

Must be some kind of hormonal imbalance...

.. anon.. in case the wife reads it.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what happened to the quark star hypothesis for PSR B0943+10

Warning: PDF!

http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0603468.pdf

[Destroy All Monsters]

Very interesting indeed.

But now .... quickly say ten times "bare quark star" and "quare bark star". I dare you!

[Spoonsinger]

Re :- neutron stars the size of a small city?

What like St Asaph?

[Crisp]

Changes in the pulsar are like a chameleon

They come and go... They come and go