Ein seltsames Signal, das vom Krebspulsar auf die Erde gestrahlt wurde, kann endlich erklärt werden. Es handelt sich um ein Interferenzmuster, das durch die Beugung von Licht durch unterschiedliche Plasmadichten innerhalb der Magnetosphäre des Pulsars erzeugt wird.

Summary of the article by ScienceAlert reporter Michelle Starr:

From within a glowing web expanding outward from an epic explosion, a dead star is flashing pulses of radio light at Earth.

This is the Crab [Pulsar](https://www.sciencealert.com/pulsar), and within its radio pulses is a strange signal that has puzzled astronomers [for years](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/522362). Called the zebra pattern, it looks like a strange spacing of wavelength bands when graphed, resembling the spiky zig-zag stripes of a zebra.

Nothing else in space has an emission quite like it, and astronomers have sought an explanation since the pattern was first observed nearly two decades ago.

Now, a theoretical astrophysicist thinks he may have solved the mystery.

It is, says Mikhail Medvedev of the University of Kansas, an interference pattern generated by the diffraction of light by different plasma densities inside the pulsar’s magnetosphere.

Read the peer-reviewed paper: [https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.205201](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.205201)

Dammit. Where are they? Why haven’t we heard a word from anywhere else, yet?

“Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.”