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Resolving Beachballs in the Crab Nebula

Posted by timothy on from the only-the-really-active-beachballs dept.

Stranger4U writes "Researchers at New Mexico Tech and the NRAO have used the Aricebo radio telescope in Puerto Rico and some specilized equipment to more closely examine the pulses from the Crab Nebula pulsar. Some of the signals lasted less than two nanoseconds, meaning the originated from a volume no bigger than beach ball. Stories are here(1) and here(2)."

1 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. Coolness Matters! ! by FFtrDale · · Score: 5, Insightful
    In Story (1), Romani says,
    "but if the 'coolness' of seeing ultra-bright beachball-sized plasma clouds thousands of light years away captures some young person's imagination and encourages them in technical pursuits, that's a good day's work."
    How many of us spent years studying difficult topics in technical fields and learned how to do things because of the "coolness" of some things that we saw as children? I'm guessing that there are a lot of us for whom that was a big motivation for sticking with it when things got hard.

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