'Black widow' pulsars consume their mates

With a deadly embrace, 'spidery' pulsars devour their partners. One such pulsar is the first rapidly spinning black widow to be discovered using only gamma rays. Black widow spiders and their Australian cousins, known as redbacks, are notorious for killing and devouring their partners. Astronomers have noted similar behavior among two rare breeds of binary system that contain rapidly spinning neutron stars, also known as pulsars, and have named them accordingly.