China's Giant Telescope Sets Record For Detection Of 800 Pulsars, Defeats NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray

Pulsar illustration (photo: Doc. NASA)

JAKARTA - China's largest singles-dish radio telescope, has managed to identify more than 800 new pulsars since its launch in 2016.

It is the Five-funded-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), which has set a record in detecting the number of new pulsars when compared to the total found by other state-owned telescopes, over the same period.

FAST Technician Jiang Peng said the telescope had found more than three times the number found by foreign telescopes. In comparison, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope only detected 216 pulsars in 2018.

According to NASA, the pulsar itself is the core of being destroyed by a massive star that runs out of fuel and moves fast, collapses due to its own weight, then explodes as a supernova.

Gravity forces more mass than the Sun to become a sphere no wider than Manhattan Island in New York, while also increasing its rotation and strengthening its magnetic field.

Pulsar can rotate thousands of times per second and use the strongest known magnetic field.

This characteristic also makes the pulsar a strong dynamo, with a super strong electric field that can rip particles from the surface and accelerate them into space.

Currently, the telescope, dubbed China Sky Eye, is in the southwestern province of Guizhou, China. FAST does have many missions, but pulsar observations are an important task of the telescope.

This is because data from pulsars can be used to confirm the presence of gravitational radiation and black holes. Not only that, pulsars can also help find mystery answers in physics.

This year, the telescope has identified a binary system pulsar with a shortest orbital period of 53 minutes, and found evidence of key to the presence of nanohertz gravitational waves. This was quoted from News CGTN, Wednesday, July 26.