Too much "pasta" for pulsars to spin down. (arXiv:1304.6546v1 [astro-ph.SR])

Too much "pasta" for pulsars to spin down. (arXiv:1304.6546v1 [astro-ph.SR]):
The lack of X-ray pulsars with spin periods > 12 s raises the question about
where the population of evolved high magnetic field neutron stars has gone.
Unlike canonical radio-pulsars, X-ray pulsars are not subject to physical
limits to the emission mechanism nor observational biases against the detection
of sources with longer periods. Here we show that a highly resistive layer in
the innermost part of the crust of neutron stars naturally limits the spin
period to a maximum value of about 10-20 s. This high resistivity is one of the
expected properties of the nuclear pasta phase, a proposed state of matter
having nucleons arranged in a variety of complex shapes. Our findings suggest
that the maximum period of isolated X-ray pulsars can be the first
observational evidence of the existence of such phase, which properties can be
constrained by future X-ray timing missions combined with more detailed models.