Editing Millisecond pulsar (section)

{{Short description|Pulsar with a rotational period less than about 10 milliseconds}}
[[File:Millisecond Pulsar.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|This diagram shows the steps astronomers say are needed to create a pulsar with a superfast spin. 1. A massive supergiant star and a "normal" Sun-like star orbit each other. 2. The massive star explodes, leaving a pulsar that eventually slows down, turns off, and becomes a cooling neutron star. 3. The Sun-like star eventually expands, spilling material on to the neutron star. This "accretion" speeds up the neutron star's spin. 4. Accretion ends, the neutron star is "recycled" into a millisecond pulsar. But in a densely packed globular cluster (2b)... The lowest mass stars are ejected, the remaining normal stars evolve, and the "recycling" scenario (3-4) takes place, creating many millisecond pulsars.]]

A '''millisecond pulsar''' ('''MSP''') is a [[pulsar]] with a [[rotational period]] less than about 10 [[millisecond]]s. Millisecond pulsars have been detected in [[radio pulsar|radio]], [[X-ray pulsar|X-ray]], and [[gamma ray]] portions of the [[electromagnetic spectrum]]. The leading hypothesis for the origin of millisecond pulsars is that they are old, rapidly rotating [[neutron stars]] that have been spun up or "recycled" through [[Accretion (astrophysics)|accretion]] of matter from a companion star in a close binary system.<ref>{{cite journal
 | last1 = Bisnovatyi-Kogan
 | first1 = G. S.
 | last2 = Komberg
 | first2 = B. V.
 | year = 1974
 | title = Pulsars and close binary systems
 | journal = Soviet Astronomy
 | volume = 18
 | pages = 217
 | url = https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1974SvA....18..217B
 | access-date = <!-- Add access date if applicable -->
 | bibcode = 1974SvA....18..217B
}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | bibcode=1991PhR...203....1B | title=Formation and evolution of binary and millisecond radio pulsars | last1=Bhattacharya | first1=D. | last2=Van Den Heuvel | first2=E. P. J. | journal=Physics Reports | year=1991 | volume=203 | issue=1–2 | page=1 | doi=10.1016/0370-1573(91)90064-S }}</ref><ref>{{cite book | bibcode=2006csxs.book..623T | year=2006 | title=Formation and evolution of compact stellar X-ray sources | last1=Tauris | first1=T. M. | last2=Van Den Heuvel | first2=E. P. J. }}</ref> For this reason, millisecond pulsars are sometimes called '''recycled pulsars'''.