Humans have always been fascinated by looking up at the night sky; the universe is full of strange and wondrous things. In past epochs, people believed the apparent movement of the stars around the earth influenced human events, and even formed the personalities of babies born on days with particular stellar configurations.
The advent of the scientific age has only increased the wonder and awe. With optical and other telescopes, we can see stars and structures that no one in history even know existed.
And what wondrous things there are to see. Astronomers recently discovered what they believe are ten “dead” stars near the center of our Milky Way galaxy. They’re neutron stars, which are stars that have partially collapsed into incredibly dense bodies with strong gravitational fields.
The ten stars are also spinning rapidly, according to scientists, which classifies them also as “pulsars.” The name comes from the word “pulse.” These recently discovered pulsars are spinning rapidly, and while they do this, they eject streams of energy out of their poles (like the north and south poles on Earth) which results in what you might call “flashing” pulses of radiation.
The newly discovered stars are part of what is called a “globular cluster,” and it’s quite far away; 18,000 light years. That means that if someone on that distant star turned on a flashlight pointed at earth, it would take 18,000 years for the light to reach our planet so that someone could see it. When we see light from distant stars, we’re literally seeing into the past.
This cluster has some stars that are weirder than others, such as “spider pulsars.” These are spinning stars that destroy other stars because of the “webs” of plasma radiation that extend from them. Others in the lot are known as “vampire” stars that suck energy from other stars until they are destroyed.
This globular cluster is called Terzan 5, and it includes thousands of different kinds of stars. In total, astronomers believe the cluster may be made up hundreds of thousands of individual stars. Most are estimated to be between 4.5 to 12 billion years old. For comparison’s sake, the earth is thought to be 4.5 billion years old.
Scott Ransom of the National Science Foundation said what makes the discovery so exciting is how rare it is. “It’s very unusual to find exotic new pulsars,” he said. But even better is how many “weirdo” stars are included in the mix.
