The times they are a-changing

Abstract

These are boom times for the study of recycled radio pulsars, and not only because of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Russell Hulse and Joe Taylor for their discovery of the first binary pulsar. A new generation of sensitive surveys aimed at high galactic latitudes and globular clusters is turning up these pulsars at a remarkable rate: the most recent pulsar catalogue, already outdated, lists 29 binary pulsars and a dozen more that were probably spun-up by mass transfer from a companion that has since been destroyed or lost. In aggregate, these pulsars have become a sample large enough for meaningful statistical investigations, while individually they show a rich variety of fascinating astrophysics.

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