Abstract
MILLISECOND pulsars are generally believed to be old pulsars that have been spun up ('recycled') as a result of accretion of matter from a companion in a low-mass X-ray binary system1. As there is a high incidence of such systems in globular clusters2, these are good places to search for millisecond pulsars; so far, ten globular-cluster pulsars have been detected unambiguously. Using the Parkes radiotelescope in Australia, we have found a pulsar with a period of 5.75 ms and a dispersion measure of 25 cm–3 pc in the direction of 47 Tucanae. Despite its probable origin as a member of a binary system, timing measurements show that the pulsar is now single. The observed dispersion measure is consistent with the pulsar lying outside the galactic electron layer and within 47 Tucanae; but it is very different from the value of 67 cm–3 pc for the pulsars that were reported recently3,4 as being in this globular cluster, and we suggest that the latter pulsars probably do not in fact lie within 47 Tucanae.
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