Do baby pulsars cry cosmic-ray tears?

摘要

Talk about enfants terribles. Baby pulsars may unleash torrents of the highest energy particles known, explaining the provenance of the ultra-high-energy cosmic rays that hit Earth. Charged particles with energies up to io20 electronvolts slam into our atmosphere from time to time, but their source has been a mystery. Pulsars - ultradense stars formed during supernova blasts - are one candidate, but it has not been clear if the particles they shed could make it through the dense shroud of stellar shrapnel that surrounds the stars. Now Ke Fang and colleagues at the University of Chicago have modelled these particles and found that they can escape within the first year of a pulsar's life.