Pulsar SMASH!

It's a (Bruce) banner moment for NASA's new Fermi satellite: it's found a pulsar that emits only gamma rays. Brief background: when a massive star explode, its core collapses. If it has enough mass, the core shrinks down into a black hole. If it doesn't have quite that much oomph (if it has about 1 - 2.8 times the mass of the Sun) it forms a weird object called a neutron star. As massive as a star but only a few kilometers across, a neutron star is incredibly dense, rapidly rotating, and has a magnetic field intense enough to give you an MRI from a million kilometers away. OK, I made that last one up, but in fact it sounds about right. The point: neutron stars are seriously awesome, right on the edge of matter as we understand it. The supercharged magnetic field channels a tremendously powerful flow of energy ...