WASHINGTON — Astronomers have discovered a new type of "spider star" — violent pulsars that shred material from companion stars, LiveScience reports.<br /><br />Pulsars that rotate every 30 milliseconds or less are called "spider stars" if they are locked in close orbit with a companion star. They siphon the material that they use to become pulsars from their companion.<br /><br />In a new paper published to the arXiv database that has not yet been peer reviewed, an international team of researchers identified five of these systems in the Milky Way.<br /><br />Three of these are "black widows," pulsars that have reduced their companion to significantly less than a tenth the mass of our Sun. One is called a "redback," with a companion star larger than a tenth of our Sun's mass. And one appeared to be a hybrid between a black widow and redback.
