New idea of how dead stars go cold

[Diana]

The mechanism responsible for intense X-ray emissions from spinning stellar corpses may not be what astronomers have assumed.


It was previously thought that the energy needed to produce the million-degree hotspots on the poles of a cooling pulsar, as the objects are called, came from collisions of charged particles above the surfaces of the stars.
But a new survey of young pulsars by the ESA's XMM-Newton Observatory suggests astronomers might have had it reversed this entire time, and that heat is being generated inside the stars, not outside.

HERE


Interesting.........

[Dragon Star]

Wonder why the heat is generated near the poles and not the entire surface?

EDIT: Never-mind, X-ray hotspots is the answer.