Theory Overview

The Secret of the Pulsars

This website is intended to both present a new theory of neutron stars, pulsars, and supernova explosions, as well as to provide a forum for discussing the theory and comparing it to the current theory.

In order to distinguish the new theory from the current theory, the new theory will be referred to as:

• “The neutron star capture theory” or “ns-capture“

Current theory will be referred to as:

• “The neutron star creation theory” or “ns-creation“

NS-Creation Theory:

The essence of the current ns-creation theory is the following:

• A star evolves to a point where it comes to a sudden end by simultaneously exploding and imploding, where:
  • the explosion produces a giant expanding cloud of hot gas which is most of the remains of the star.
  • the implosion produces a compact neutron star:
    i.e. a neutron star is “created”,
    thus the term: the neutron star “creation” theory
  • the neutron star is rapidly spinning and is observable as a “pulsar”

NS-Capture Theory:

The essence of the new ns-capture theory is the following:

• A normal star is evolving along its normal evolutionary process.
• The ns-capture theory asserts that there are many neutron stars co-existing in the galaxy with the normal stars and that occasionally one of these neutron stars will be travelling in the vicinity of a normal star and that the neutron star will come close enough to the normal star that it will be “captured” by the normal star where:
  • the neutron star and the normal star end up bound together in a close binary star system where:
    • the neutron star that ends up bound to the normal star will be closely orbiting around the star that captured it.
      thus the term: the neutron star “capture” theory
  • subsequent to the capture, the neutron star is spun up to become a pulsar, and burrows into the atmosphere of the normal star, continuing in its close binary orbit
  • after some time, perhaps 1 million years, the normal star is so heated up by the presence of the neutron star that its own gravity is no longer sufficient to hold it together, and it spontaneously explodes into a giant cloud of hot gas, with the neutron star remaining at the center of the cloud as a rapidly spinning pulsar.

Notice that the end result of both the ns-creation theory and the ns-capture theory are effectively the same:

• a rapidly spinning pulsar at the center of a giant expanding cloud of hot gas (i.e. the cloud of gas is the remnants of a supernova explosion)

The question is whether the NS-Capture theory or the NS=Creation theory is the correct explanation of how the supernova explosion occurred in the first place.

The primary subject of this website is to explore these two theories to determine which is correct. The result of this examination will show that the ns-capture theory is logically the correct theory that must be used to explain the properties of all the pulsars that have been observed to exist since the discovery of the first pulsar in 1967.

The work on this website will then turn to an examination of the implications of the ns-capture theory, where the major implication is that in order to support the ns-capture theory that there must exist 10-100 times as many neutron stars as there are normal stars in the Milky Way galaxy, as well as in all other galaxies.

The neutron stars are uniformly intermingled with normal stars with the implication being that within a sphere of radius 4 light years, the distance to the closest star to the Sun, that there exist 10-100 neutron stars within that sphere. This means that the closest neutron star to the Sun is likely to be no more than one light year away.

The fact that all these neutron stars must exist “is”:

“The Secret of the Pulsars”

This website will explore why examination of the pulsars that are currently observed, forces us to reach the conclusion that all these additional neutron stars must exist in a pre-pulsar state in order to explain the existence of the observed pulsars.

In addition, discussion will examine whether all these neutron stars actually are currently observed, but that the data that shows the existence of these neutron stars, is currently interpreted to be evidence for other phenomena, such as quasars or Active Galactic Nucleii (AGN’s). i.e. many of the observations that are currently interpreted to be evidence for entities that are far away beyond the galaxy, may, in fact, really be evidence for nearby neutron stars.

i.e. once we decide to look for these neutron stars it should become apparent that we do currently observe them, and that they represent the elusive dark matter that also is known to exist but has not been identified until now.

i.e. these neutron stars “are” the so-called missing “dark matter” that must exist to explain other observed properties of galaxies.