Discovering the Shortest Orbital Period Pulsar Binary System: A Breakthrough by China’s FAST Telescope

2023-06-23 08:18:25

The 500-meter-diameter spherical radio telescope (FAST) “Cheon’an”, which is called China’s eye in the sky, has once once more achieved a new achievement. Scientists have discovered a pulsar binary system with an orbital period of only 53 minutes by “Cheonan” FAST. This has the shortest orbital period among the pulsar binary systems discovered so far, and the theory that the spider pulsar changes from a “red bag” to a “black widow” system has been verified through observation. This supplemented the shortcomings of the spider pulsar change theory. On June 21, 2023, Beijing time, related results were published online in the international journal “Natural”. A pulsar is a neutron star that exhibits a pulsating phenomenon. Some pulsars found in astronomical observations are binary systems and orbit with other stars. According to existing astrophysical models, when two stars are close together, the pulsar swallows the material of the star next to it. As the pulsar erodes the stars, the distance between the two stars gradually gets closer and the orbital speed gradually increases. With the change of the binary system, the mass of the star decreases following mass encroachment, and the pulsar pushes the star to envelop each other and slows down the rotation speed. Dr. Jinjin Ban (潘之辰), co-first author of the thesis, said that this behavior is similar to the act of female spiders in the natural world supplementing nutrients by swallowing male spiders, so astronomers named similar objects by the names of the two spiders and called them spider pulsars. said to be called “’Redback’ and ‘Black Widow’ are both spider names, referring to a special pulsar system. This naming is related to the living habits of the two spiders. Just as female spiders devour male spiders following mating, pulsars gradually consume material from their companion star, or even consume their companion star. For this reason, foreign astronomers named each of the two pulsars several decades ago, and since they are all spiders, we collectively call them spider pulsars.” From “Red Bag” to “Black Widow”, the pulsar-stellar transformation process takes hundreds of millions of years. In the past, astronomy has detected each system in the “red bag” and “black widow” states, but has never detected an intermediate state of quantum change. The research team observed a binary system called M71E with FAST, a spherical radio telescope with a diameter of 500 meters, called “China’s eye in the sky”. It has the fastest orbital speed among pulsars. Dr. Ban Ji-jin said, “The orbital period of the pulsar in the changing phase is very short and the distance between the two stars is very close, so observation is very difficult.” “When looking for pulsars, orbital motion has a particularly large impact,” he said. FAST has the strength of high sensitivity. Other telescopes can take an hour or even hours to observe, but FAST can find a pulsar with the same sensitivity in minutes. If the sensitivity is the same, there is a chance to find similar pulsars because the time required is short and the effect of orbital motion is small.” The thesis reviewer of “Natural” said that this achievement was the discovery of a very interesting pulsar binary system, and that this discovery shortened the record for the shortest orbital period of a pulsar binary system by regarding 30% and illustrates the existence of a new unknown process in the change of spider pulsars. said.
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