Eh, they haven't discovered any planets around the stars, but it does seem likely from the remnants that they could form.
did you miss this part of the article?
The finding represents the missing piece in a puzzle that arose in 1992, when Aleksander Wolszczan of Pennsylvania State University found three planets circling a pulsar called PSR B1257+12. Those pulsar planets, two the size of Earth, were the first planets of any type ever discovered outside our solar system. Astronomers have since found indirect evidence the pulsar planets were born out of a dusty debris disk, but nobody had directly detected this kind of disk until now.
I was thinking of this though:
Any planets around the stars that gave rise to pulsars would have been incinerated when the stars blew up. The pulsar disk discovered by Spitzer might represent the first step in the formation of a new, more exotic type of planetary system, similar to the one found by Wolszczan in 1992.
So at least for a good long time, there aren't any planets around every neutron star. They may form new planets, or may capture some,
but they get all blowed up.
note what the article specifically says about
when the planet(s) are incinerated - it happens during the supernova that creates the neutron star, not during the lifetime of the neutron star itself. i don't disagree with you that neutron stars exist for some period of time without planets, the duration of which is debatable. but if a neutron star endures an epoch without planets, i would tend to think that it is because 1) planets have not yet formed out of the debris disk orbiting it (assuming a debris disk exists in the first place), 2) it hasn't yet captured any planets with its gravity, or 3) any previously existing planets it may have had in the past were flung out of their orbits by an external gravitational influence. but i can't imagine that a "planet-less" epoch would be induced by the radiation of the pulsar vaporizing any existing planets...perhaps gaseous planets, but not rocky planets like the ones found in our inner Solar System.
IF. If the distance between the stars of a small constellation is small, let's say star to star around the size of our solar system, then the gravities of the stars would have different effects of any planets rotating in the area. As a result those planets caught in the gravity field of that constellation would eventually get drawn into a star. This is close to what Fallen Kell said.
ok, now your logic makes sense to me. you threw me through a loop when you mistook constellations for star clusters. you see, the constituent stars of a constellation/asterism are generally
not members of a common star cluster (open or globular), regardless of how large or small the constellation may be. take the small constellation Lyra for instance, which contains the bright star Vega, and approximates the shape of a small square/rhombus. while i haven't researched it myself, i'd be willing to be that if you research the 4 stars that comprise the constellation Lyra, you'll find that their distances from us vary greatly, perhaps by orders of magnitude. so while they appear to be close together in the sky, one star may be 100 times farther away from us than another (i.e. its a depth perception issue). therefore , the constituent stars of a constellation typically are 99% of the time not gravitationally bound. for the stars of a cluster on the other hand, you're assertion makes perfect sense...particularly globular clusters, as their stars are typically more densely packed than those of an open cluster.
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