Strange pulsar found by volunteer army

[n2doc]

BY: JULIAN SWALLOW | AUGUST-13-2010 |


MORE THAN 100,000 BUDDING Einsteins across the world have helped an international team of scientists to discover a rare pulsar, just by leaving their computers switched on. The rapidly rotating pulsar is unusual because it is not accompanied by a companion star, typical of most pulsars.

The results of the discovery, published in the journal Science today, are the culmination of an international effort led by Benjamin Knispel at Max-Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hannover, Germany, and involving scientists at Melbourne's Swinburne University of Technology.

"We wanted to find something that is really exotic, because that will transform our understanding," says Dr Ramesh Bhat from Swinburne's Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing. This was one of five centres worldwide that helped process telescopic survey data through supercomputers, to search for pulsars.


Read more: http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/journal/strange-pulsar-found-by-volunteer-army.htm