Pulsars and Extreme Physics - A 50th Anniversary

Physics Colloquium 5th May 2017 delivered by Dame Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell Pulsars, or pulsating radio stars, were discovered accidentally 50 years ago. Dame Professor Bell Burnell will give a brief account of the equipment used and the discovery. We now understand pulsars to be rapidly rotating neutron stars (1ms < P 10s, R ≈ 10km, surface speed 10%c) which manifest extreme physics in several dimensions (average density = nuclear, surface B up to 1011T). Dame Professor Bell Burnell will describe the main features of pulsars and indicate how they are impacting our understanding of physics today.