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Neutron Stars/X-ray Binaries
If the neutron star is rotating rapidly, as most young neutron stars are, the
strong magnetic fields combined with rapid rotation create an awesome generator
that can produce electric potential differences of quadrillions of volts. Such
voltages, which are 30 million times greater than those of lightning bolts,
create deadly blizzards of high-energy particles.
Rotation-powered pulsars
These high-energy particles produce beams of radiation from radio through
gamma-ray energies. Like a rotating lighthouse beam, the radiation can be
observed as a pulsing source of radiation, or pulsar. Pulsars were first observed by radio astronomers
in 1967. There are now approximately 1000 known pulsars. The pulsar in the Crab Nebula, one of the youngest and most
energetic pulsars known, has been observed to pulse in almost every wavelength—radio, optical, X-ray, and gamma-ray. A few dozen pulsars are observed to pulse in
X-rays and six are seen to pulse in gamma-rays.
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