Today's colloquium: But wait! There's more!: A wealth of science from millisecond pulsars

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.© Picture courtesy of Matt Schmachtenberg, from JMU's 'The Breeze'

Pulsars are some of astrophysics' most exotic objects. We currently know of about 2300 pulsars in our Galaxy, but a small subset of them, the millisecond pulsars (MSPs), are truly remarkable. These systems are notoriously hard to detect, yet their numbers have more than doubled in the past 4 years via surveys using the world's most sensitive telescopes. Specialized 'timing' observations of these new systems as well as much improved monitoring of previously known MSPs are providing fantastic results. Some examples include unusual aspects of binary and stellar astrophysics, the nature of matter at supra-nuclear densities, and the direct detection of gravitational waves, possibly within the next five years.