Mysterious Interstellar Plasma Revealed by Twinkling Pulsars

Artist’s illustration of a pulsar. Credit: Carl Knox, OzGrav-Swinburne University

Occasionally pulsars—rapidly-spinning remnants of stars that flash like a lighthouse—show extreme variations in brightness. Astrophysicists predict that these short bursts of brightness occur because dense regions of interstellar DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac69c6