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Stuttering stars found

Unpredictable cousins of pulsars baffle astronomers.

Astronomers have stumbled upon a bizarre kind of star that stutters out fleeting flashes of radio waves.

Read the story here.

Posted by Nicola Jones on February 15, 2006 05:52 PM |

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Nice idea that RRATs are an evolutionary stage of neutron stars.

The question is whether they represent a late stage or an early stage such as deciding whether or not to beome a magnetar or a normal pulsar.

To test: look to old and new galaxies where populations of neutron stars may be greater in old galaxies. Then monitor to see if the enhanced population of RRATs occur in old or new galaxies to get a feel if the a correlation supports whether the RRAT stage is for old or young neutron stars.

Posted by: borman | February 15, 2006 11:32 PM

Influence of a Star burst on the Sun-Earth environment

There were 11 areas of sky where scientists of of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory, UK saw occasional flashes," The flashes were from outer space. The strange type of star was spotted using the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia1. Star flares during low Planetary Indices (Kp) and low Electron flux (E-flux) conditions of the Sun-Earth environment might result in lowering further the magnetic field as well as the electron flux in the Sun-Earth environment through the repulsion of the magnetic field in the Sun-Earth environment by starbursts. The E-flux variation will in turn induce variations in the production of ionosphere currents. Ionosphere currents are produced by geomagnetic storms originating from the star-sun-earth environment. Can ionosphere current variations have an influence on atmospheric temperature2? On February 11 and 12, 2006, hailstorm and snowstorm were reported in large areas in the northern hemisphere (East Coast of the United States, Tokyo City of Japan), while in the tropics a sudden drop of temperatures has led to foggy and smoggy conditions. This temperature variation is different in different parts of the earth as a possible effect of the solar flare would be dependent on the geomagnetic coordinates. Sudden changes in the atmospheric temperature in various parts of the earth has been found to be a precursor of earthquake in the active fault areas. The electron flux variation is due to the fluctuation in the outer periphery of Van Allen radiation belt surrounding the earth.

References:
1Peplow, M. Nature Stuttering stars found Unpredictable cousins of pulsars baffle astronomers. Nature News Published online: 15 February 2006; | doi: 10.1038/news060213-6

2Solanki, S.K.; Schussler, M. and Fligge, M., Evolution of the sun's large-scale magnetic field since the Maunder minimum. Nature 408: 445-447, 2000.


Acknowledgement
This work was supported by NASA-ESA SOHO EIT project no.264.

Posted by: Saumitra Mukherjee | February 16, 2006 06:12 PM

The periods of 0.4 to 7 seconds seems to suggest aging pulsars. If magnetic fields can be found by looking at basic period changes one could say something about whether these are death throes of a dying pulsar.

Posted by: N.Panchapakesan | February 17, 2006 04:50 AM

I was impressed; these are indeed odd objects.

I rather think the Hyman et al source is even more mysterious, and the bursters you've found could be pulsars that are momentarily luminous. I wonder how they're related to the giant pulses of the Crab etc, too. A paper I published years ago proposed a self-saturated mechanism that might describe them.[Physics Letters A 318 (2003) 412–414] I wonder now if the predicted property--constant energy in the pulse, ie Power times pulse width=constant--could describe these 11 results.

In any case, I'd be interested to see if the constant energy in a pulse describes any of your data. I think it will take some serious study to fathom how these irregular sources work.

Gregory Benford

Posted by: Gregory Benford | February 20, 2006 12:33 AM

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