What causes a pulsar to emit radio-frequent pulses?
This is not well understood, but its thought the process has to do with the large magnetic field at the surface of the neutron star. The radio pulses (and sometimes the pulses are observed in other parts of the spectrum, like visible light, for example), apparently arise near the polar cap of the magnetic field and are beamed out like a light house beacon. As the beacon sweeps across our position, we detect the “pulse.
