The glitches from pulsar emissions are born deep within the dead stars Jurik Peter/Shutterstock
The radio waves we see from pulsars have a mysterious glitch – but now we know the ingredients that must be present in the heart of these ultra-dense stellar corpses to give their emissions a hiccup.
About 60 years ago, researchers noticed that the radio emissions from pulsars can suddenly and unexpectedly change in frequency, indicating that the pulsar’s rotation slowed down.
Pulsars are like nested shells of exotic quantum states of matter…
