Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 March 2016
Theorists, both physicists and astronomers, are usually greatly pleased with their choice, because to study theoretical questions is, in a sense, easier and more effective than to observe and to measure. Experimentalists and observers, on the other hand, often grumble at their fortune for their work is very labour-consuming and its success depends largely on quite non-scientific problems, such as getting money, equipment and so on. I should like to mention this because the study of pulsars can serve as an example (not, of course, the only one) when the theorists have every reason for envying the observers. At any rate as far as I am concerned, this is so. In the previous report made by A. Hewish the facts were presented and we have every reason for congratulating the observers on their success. In less than three years great work has been done. As for the theory of pulsars we have, for the time being, a shortage of exactly established facts and I would like to discuss mainly general considerations and working hypotheses. Fortunately, for the theorists the situation is not always like that. There are cases when theory goes far ahead and anticipates observations. In the case of pulsars some lag in the theory is caused by two circumstances. Firstly we deal here with exceptionally complicated tasks, for example, with the equation of state of a substance with a density ℓ ≿ 1011 g cm−3 and the electrodynamics of the magnetosphere of a rapidly rotating star with non-coinciding axes of rotation and of magnetic symmetry (say, with the direction of magnetic dipole). Secondly the observational data, in spite of their variety, give only indirect information about pulsars because their structure cannot be seen directly as, for example, in the case of the surface of the Sun or a number of nebulae.