{"id":237115,"date":"2026-05-14T02:31:25","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T07:31:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/a-twinkling-pulsar-reveals-invisible-structures-in-space"},"modified":"2026-05-14T02:31:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T07:31:25","slug":"a-twinkling-pulsar-reveals-invisible-structures-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/a-twinkling-pulsar-reveals-invisible-structures-in-space","title":{"rendered":"A twinkling pulsar reveals invisible structures in space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-twinkling-pulsar-reveals-invisible-structures-in-space.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The twinkling stars in the night sky are not just beautiful to look at. Their flickering reveals something about the varying temperatures and densities in the layers of Earth\u2019s atmosphere, which refract the light as it travels toward us. Certain stellar remnants that emit radio waves can exhibit a very similar effect.<\/p>\n<p>Although their radio waves\u2014which have longer wavelengths than visible light\u2014can penetrate Earth\u2019s atmosphere almost undisturbed, they are scattered by the thin gas between the stars. Their twinkling\u2014known as scintillation\u2014thus provides unique insights into interstellar space.<\/p>\n<p>An international team led by Tim Sprenger from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) has measured the flickering radio radiation from an object using an innovative observation technique. The results are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aanda.org\/10.1051\/0004-6361\/202659097\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in Astronomy &amp; Astrophysics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The twinkling stars in the night sky are not just beautiful to look at. Their flickering reveals something about the varying temperatures and densities in the layers of Earth\u2019s atmosphere, which refract the light as it travels toward us. Certain stellar remnants that emit radio waves can exhibit a very similar effect. Although their radio [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[219,1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}