What is a pulsar? What’s the point of it?

China Sky Eye has discovered more than 660 pulsars!

A pulsar is a very extreme celestial body, and its density is amazing, weighing hundreds of millions of tons per cubic centimeter! Here is an Institute of Extreme Physics. Through the observation of pulsars, scientists can learn more about the laws of extreme physics. Only the more pulsars are discovered, the better this knowledge can be learned.

Another feature of pulsars is that their rotation speed is extremely fast. Usually, it only takes a few seconds to complete one rotation, and some even complete one rotation in tens of milliseconds. Combined with the fact that it can emit two powerful pulses, it makes it wiggle across the universe like a beacon.

The rotation speed of pulsars is extremely stable, which can be used as a reference for human astronomical observations. Not only that, if we want to conduct interstellar voyages in the future, these pulsars will be the reference coordinate system for human spacecraft to prevent going the wrong way.

In May 2020, the international journal “Astronomy and Astrophysics Research” published the results of the team of Han Jinlin, a researcher at the National Astronomical Observatory of China, on the cover. They launched a mission called the Pulsar Snapshot Survey (GPPS). 201 pulsars in the galactic plane of the Milky Way were discovered within the time limit!

With its unparalleled observation capabilities and efficiency, the number of pulsars discovered by China’s Sky Eye can even be more than that of all other telescopes in the world combined at the same time! That is to say, China Tianyan has increased the efficiency of pulsar discovery by all mankind by more than 1 times!

Why does the Chinese Sky Eye have such an amazing observation efficiency?

First of all, this is inseparable from its huge area. As the world’s largest single-aperture radio telescope, the China Sky Eye covers an area of 250,000 square meters, equivalent to 30 standard football fields. We also joked yesterday: The Vatican, the smallest country in the world, cannot fit two heavenly eyes in its entire land area.

Moreover, the observation time of the Chinese Sky Eye is also very long. According to Chinese scientists, it can observe almost 5,300 hours a year. To use a sentence on the Internet to describe it: it is better than other telescopes, and it is more diligent than other telescopes. It is natural to make such a major discovery.

You know, FAST can generate almost 20PB of scientific data in an average of one year, which is about 20 million GB! On average, it can receive 1GB of data per second, and the peak data rate in 2018 can even reach 38G per second!

According to the introduction of Academician Wu Xiangping of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China will also build five 500-meter-diameter radio telescopes in the future. Only one unit is ahead of the world for decades, and there will be another 5 units.