X-Rated Astrophysics

Last year,the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) spacecraft  was aimed at a pulsar named PSR J1846-0258 some 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila when the star suddenly erupted in a blast of x-rays.

The display, which propagated as stripes across the stellar disc,is reported online in Science, by  Fotis Gavriil of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. He suggests  PSR J1846-0258 may  be a magnetar in the making---a neutron star with an enormously powerful magnetic field. Only a dozen or so have been discovered, routinely emitting  energetic x and gamma rays.

"The bursts were completely unexpected," Fotis told Science,  Because the young-- roughly  millennium old--  pulsar's magnetic field strength is  low his colleagues suspect it is still evolving. He says the discovery raises important questions-- Do pulsars behave like magnetars only periodically and then revert? Did all magnetars originate as pulsars?