Related papers: Pulsar scintillation patterns and strangelets
Extreme Scattering Events are radio-wave lensing events caused by AU-sized concentrations of ionised gas. Although they were discovered more than a decade ago we still have no clear picture of the physical nature of the lenses. To…
Several radio-wave scintillation phenomena exhibit properties which are difficult to accommodate within the standard propagation model based on distributed Kolmogorov turbulence in the ionised ISM; here we discuss one such phenomenon,…
We study three quasar radio sources (B1257-326, B1519-273, and J1819+385) that show large amplitude intraday and annual scintillation variability produced by the Earth's motion relative to turbulent-scattering screens located within a few…
We show that surface waves along interstellar current sheets closely aligned with the line of sight lead to pulsar scintillation properties consistent with those observed. This mechanism naturally produces the length and density scales of…
Extreme scattering events (ESEs) in the interstellar medium (ISM) were first observed in regular flux measurements of compact extragalactic sources. They are characterized by a flux variation over a period of weeks, suggesting the passage…
Stars twinkle because their light goes through the atmosphere. The same phenomenon is expected when the light of extra-galactic stars goes through a Galactic -- disk or halo -- refractive medium. Because of the large distances involved…
It was recently suggested by Boldyrev & Gwinn that the characteristics of radio scintillations from distant pulsars are best understood if the interstellar electron-density fluctuations that cause the time broadening of the radio pulses…
It is shown that nuggets of strange quark matter may be extracted from the surface of pulsars and accelerated by strong electric fields to high energies if pulsars are strange stars with the crusts, comprised of nuggets embedded in a…
Radio pulsars scintillate because their emission travels through the ionized interstellar medium via multiple paths, which interfere with each other. It has long been realized that the scattering screens responsible for the scintillation…
The rare and conspicuous flux density variations of some radio sources (extragalactic and pulsars) for periods of weeks to months have been denoted Extreme Scattering Events (ESE's) by Fiedler et al. (1987). Presently, there is no…
Extreme Scattering Events are sometimes manifest in the light-curves of compact radio-quasars at frequencies of a few GHz. These events are not understood. The model which appears to offer the best explanation requires a new population of…
Observations over the last two decades have shown that a significant fraction of all flat-spectrum, extragalactic radio sources exhibit flux density variations on timescales of a day or less at frequencies of several GHz. It has been…
There have been several reports of exotic nuclear fragments, with highly unusual charge to mass ratio, in cosmic ray experiments. Although there exist experimental uncertainties which make them, at best, only candidate "exotic" events, it…
Pulsar scintillation can be used to measure small scale structure in the Galaxy, but little is known about the specific interstellar medium features that cause scintillation. We searched for interstellar medium counterparts to all…
We propose model of propagation of lumps of Strange Quark Matter (strangelets) through the atmosphere, which accounts for their apparent strong penetrability and normal nuclear-type sizes at the same time. The mass spectrum of strangelets…
Stars twinkle because their light propagates through the atmosphere. The same phenomenon is expected when the light of remote stars crosses a Galactic - disk or halo - refractive medium such as a molecular cloud.We present the promising…
Extreme Scattering Events (ESEs) are attributed to radio-wave refraction by a cloud of free-electrons crossing the line-of-sight. We present a new model in which these electrons form the photo-ionized 'skin' of an underlying cool,…
We develop the theory of interstellar scintillation as caused by an irregular plasma having a power-law spatial density spectrum with a spectral exponent of 4 corresponding to a medium with abrupt changes in its density. An ``outer scale''…
Stars twinkle because their light propagates through the atmosphere. The same phenomenon is expected when the light of remote stars crosses a Galactic - disk or halo - refractive medium such as a molecular cloud. We present the promising…
We have made high-resolution, high-sensitivity dynamic spectra of a sample of strong pulsars at 430 MHz with the Arecibo radiotelescope. For 4 pulsars we find faint but sharply delineated features in the secondary spectra. These are…