NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered 12 new gamma-ray-only pulsars and has detected gamma-ray pulses from 18 others. The finds are transforming our understanding of how these stellar cinders work. "We know of 1,800 pulsars, but until Fermi we saw only little wisps of energy from all but a handful of them," says Roger Romani of Stanford University, Calif. A pulsar is a rapidly spinning and highly magnetized neutron star, the crushed core left behind when a massive sun explodes. (source: nasa.gov)
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