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Difficulty understanding passage - Scientific American
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13 Apr 2022, 00:14
13 Apr 2022, 00:14
Hi,
I'm going through a passage in Scientific American and having difficulty understanding it. I've seen this type of passages being asked in GRE. Can someone please help explain what does it mean and what the author is trying to say?
Joy of Pulsars
The origin of the energy input to the Crab Nebula had been a puzzle that had long defied attempts at solution. Among the various possibilities considered, John Archibald Wheeler at Princeton in 1966 and Franco Pacini at Cornell in 1967 had independently put forward the apparently far-fetched idea that a rotating neutron star might be the energy source. Now, after the fact, it is possible to use the observations of the Crab Nebula and its pulsar (NP0531) to invert the problem and show that if the pulsar is a rotating star, it must have the mass and radius of a neutron star. In other words, even without the theory developed over the past 40 years, it is possible to assert that stars of approximately one solar mass and radii on the order of 10 kilometers must exist since the pulsar in the Crab Nebula is such a star.
Scientific American
I'm going through a passage in Scientific American and having difficulty understanding it. I've seen this type of passages being asked in GRE. Can someone please help explain what does it mean and what the author is trying to say?
Joy of Pulsars
The origin of the energy input to the Crab Nebula had been a puzzle that had long defied attempts at solution. Among the various possibilities considered, John Archibald Wheeler at Princeton in 1966 and Franco Pacini at Cornell in 1967 had independently put forward the apparently far-fetched idea that a rotating neutron star might be the energy source. Now, after the fact, it is possible to use the observations of the Crab Nebula and its pulsar (NP0531) to invert the problem and show that if the pulsar is a rotating star, it must have the mass and radius of a neutron star. In other words, even without the theory developed over the past 40 years, it is possible to assert that stars of approximately one solar mass and radii on the order of 10 kilometers must exist since the pulsar in the Crab Nebula is such a star.
Scientific American
Re: Difficulty understanding passage - Scientific American
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13 Apr 2022, 01:01
13 Apr 2022, 01:01
Expert Reply
amolborgaonkar wrote:
Hi,
I'm going through a passage in Scientific American and having difficulty understanding it. I've seen this type of passages being asked in GRE. Can someone please help explain what does it mean and what the author is trying to say?
Joy of Pulsars
The origin of the energy input to the Crab Nebula had been a puzzle that had long defied attempts at solution. Among the various possibilities considered, John Archibald Wheeler at Princeton in 1966 and Franco Pacini at Cornell in 1967 had independently put forward the apparently far-fetched idea that a rotating neutron star might be the energy source. Now, after the fact, it is possible to use the observations of the Crab Nebula and its pulsar (NP0531) to invert the problem and show that if the pulsar is a rotating star, it must have the mass and radius of a neutron star. In other words, even without the theory developed over the past 40 years, it is possible to assert that stars of approximately one solar mass and radii on the order of 10 kilometers must exist since the pulsar in the Crab Nebula is such a star.
Scientific American
I'm going through a passage in Scientific American and having difficulty understanding it. I've seen this type of passages being asked in GRE. Can someone please help explain what does it mean and what the author is trying to say?
Joy of Pulsars
The origin of the energy input to the Crab Nebula had been a puzzle that had long defied attempts at solution. Among the various possibilities considered, John Archibald Wheeler at Princeton in 1966 and Franco Pacini at Cornell in 1967 had independently put forward the apparently far-fetched idea that a rotating neutron star might be the energy source. Now, after the fact, it is possible to use the observations of the Crab Nebula and its pulsar (NP0531) to invert the problem and show that if the pulsar is a rotating star, it must have the mass and radius of a neutron star. In other words, even without the theory developed over the past 40 years, it is possible to assert that stars of approximately one solar mass and radii on the order of 10 kilometers must exist since the pulsar in the Crab Nebula is such a star.
Scientific American
Sentence by sentence ?
Difficulty understanding passage - Scientific American
[#permalink]
13 Apr 2022, 01:20
13 Apr 2022, 01:20
I'm having problems understanding this particular part -
"Now, after the fact, it is possible to use the observations of the Crab Nebula and its pulsar (NP0531) to invert the problem and show that if the pulsar is a rotating star, it must have the mass and radius of a neutron star. In other words, even without the theory developed over the past 40 years, it is possible to assert that stars of approximately one solar mass and radii on the order of 10 kilometers must exist since the pulsar in the Crab Nebula is such a star."
What does the author want to say in second sentence? And how does inverting the problem implies what is stated in the first sentence?
Thanks
"Now, after the fact, it is possible to use the observations of the Crab Nebula and its pulsar (NP0531) to invert the problem and show that if the pulsar is a rotating star, it must have the mass and radius of a neutron star. In other words, even without the theory developed over the past 40 years, it is possible to assert that stars of approximately one solar mass and radii on the order of 10 kilometers must exist since the pulsar in the Crab Nebula is such a star."
What does the author want to say in second sentence? And how does inverting the problem implies what is stated in the first sentence?
Thanks
