How do neutron stars evolve?

A possible evolutionary history of neutron stars is delineated, ranging from star formation through supernova explosions, X-ray and pulsar stages to an eventual pulsar turnoff via spin alignment, or magnetic field decay. New is the emphasis that there should be two populations of pulsars, the slow and the fast one, according to their successive formation in a binary system. The two pulsar populations are related to two phenotypes of supernova remnants, of which Cas A and the Crab are the best known examples.     

Neues vom Ontong-Java-Plateau (Westpazifik)

For the investigation of climatic history for the last 65 million years, several holes were drilled in 1990 on the Ontong Java Plateau by the drilling vessel Joides Resolution, under the auspices of the international Ocean Drilling Program. The Ontong Java Plateau is the largest basalt plateau on earth, and was formed in the Middle Cretaceous. From the core material, seismic reflectors from the overlying sediments can be associated with specific, climate-related oceanic events. For the cyclic sediments of the last 2 million years, high-resolution isotope curves were generated which depict the two dominant Milankovitch cycles with periods of 100 000 and 41000 years.