Malvin Ruderman

I work mainly on problems associated with collapsed objects in astrophysics, especially neutron stars. This has been particularly exciting as new unexpected phenomena involving these stars continue to be discovered. Some neutron stars are extraordinarily efficient as accelerators for extremely relativistic particles and their gamma-ray emission. Other have sudden jumps("glitches") in their spin-rates. Magnetic fields on neutron star surfaces are observed to range from less than a billion Gauss to more than a million times larger. Within our galaxy there are young strongly magnetized neutron stars which support repeated explosions. Distant ones near the edge of the observable universe may the source of extraordinary explosions in which perhaps a tenth of their reat mass energy is converted to bursts of gamma-rays. Observations are far ahead of theories and much remains to be understood.