2006/01/13 by J. W. T. Hessels, Jason W. T. Hessels, Scott M. Ransom +9 · 5 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/science.1123430
8 pages, 1 figure. Accepted by Science. Published electronically via Science Express 12 Jan 2006
openalex publication_date 2006/01/13 · arxiv created 2006/01/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We have discovered a 716-hertz eclipsing binary radio pulsar in the globular cluster Terzan 5 using the Green Bank Telescope. It is the fastest spinning neutron star found to date, breaking the 24-year record held by the 642-hertz pulsar B1937+21. The difficulty in detecting this pulsar, because of its very low flux density and high eclipse fraction (approximately 40% of the orbit), suggests that even faster spinning neutron stars exist. If the pulsar has a mass less than twice the mass of the Sun, then its radius must be constrained by the spin rate to be <16 kilometers. The short period of this pulsar also constrains models that suggest that gravitational radiation, through an r-mode (Rossby wave) instability, limits the maximum spin frequency of neutron stars.