very interesting, i can tell you what its not though. secret alien codes describing a galactic superwave and subquantum kinetics to paul laviolette.

very interesting, i can tell you what its not though. secret alien codes describing a galactic superwave and subquantum kinetics to paul laviolette.

LOOLOLOL... I suspect your quite right.

"i can tell you what its not though. secret alien codes describing a galactic superwave and subquantum kinetics to paul laviolette"

So we are in agreement that it is caused by Repugnant Newtrons I commune with while chasing the ether-wave dragon

Inexpertly, a sudden increase in spin rate implies a sudden contraction in size ("ice skater pulling arms in"). Pulsars are born as the hot embers of SNe. Presumably, pulsars cool off over the ages. Perhaps a dense, high-pressure solid, cooling down, on a Pressure-Temperature diagram, could conceivably cross solid-state phase transitions, like water ice X to IX to VIII to VII etc.? Perhaps neutronized "neutronium" matter exists in several solid phases, of increasing density, so that as the pulsars cool across phase transitions, they suddenly shrink ?

Inexpertly, a sudden increase in spin rate implies a sudden contraction in size ("ice skater pulling arms in").

You have it backwards. The glitches are when they slow down for a short time, then they speed back up to almost the speed they had before the glitch.

That aside, your idea is plausible, but in the opposite direction. I was thinking that the radius might expand, slowing it down, then the star settles back down and re-compacts, returning to its original rotation rate. This could be achieved by the star flattening out a bit around its equator for a short time.

In the above article, I think they place way too much emphasis on the 'accepted theory'. It seems more accurate to say that this is currently unexplained, though there is one idea that is being investigated more than others, and has gained some support.

Inexpertly, a sudden increase in spin rate implies a sudden contraction in size ("ice skater pulling arms in").

You have it backwards. The glitches are when they slow down for a short time, then they speed back up to almost the speed they had before the glitch.

I don't that's the common type of glitch, see for example Figure 3 in this paper:

http://arxiv.org/...43v2.pdf

Similarly figures 2(a) and 3(a) in this show the same sudden increase in frequency, not a decrease. The text bears this out too:

"The first glitch in PSR 1046-58 was observed in this monitoring programme. It occurred on December 9, 1997, about 200 days after the commencement of intensive observations on this pulsar. The spin-up was rather large in magnitude and was accompanied by an increase in spin-down rate."

There are two physical mechanisms thought to be responsible for the glitch of a pulsar - either they are caused by starquakes, in which case the neutron star's crust cracks, and there is a fundamental reorganisation of the matter within the star, or they are due to a catastrophic unpinning of vortices in the neutron star superfluid. Young, energetic pulsars like the Crab are thought to undergo starquakes whereas those of more intermediate age (~104-5 yr) are thought to glitch because of an unpinning of the vortices in the neutron star superfluid. Both the Crab and Vela pulsars glitch regularly. Millisecond pulsars and those with large characteristic ages rarely if ever glitch.