Abstract The rapidly spinning pulsars could be regarded as the consequence of a competition between gravitational wave emission and viscous dissipation. All cases, neutron stars, strange stars and hybrid stars, are discussed here. Viscosity due to strangeness-changing weak interactions in dense nuclear matter fixes the fastest spinning frequency. This only implies the existence of strangeness in the interior of the stars, and does not distinguish among hyperon matter, strange quark matter or a mixture of the two. We conclude that the cluster of rapidly spinning pulsars, containing two fastest millisecond pulsars and low-mass X-ray binaries, is possibly signalling strangeness.
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