Pulsars—rapidly-spinning remnants of stars that flash like a lighthouse—occasionally show extreme variations in brightness. Scientists predict that these short bursts of brightness happen because dense regions of interstellar plasma (the hot gas between stars) scatter the radio waves emitted by the pulsar. However, we still don’t know where the energy sources required to form and sustain these dense plasma regions come from. To better understand these interstellar formations, we require more detailed observations of their small-scale structure, and a promising avenue for this is in the scintillation, or “twinkling,” of pulsars.
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Source: Phys.org