SETI tracks distorted signals from distant pulsars with data from destroyed Arecibo Observatory

An illustration of a pulsar, a rapidly spinning neutron star that sweeps beams of radiation through space like a cosmic lighthouse.

You can knock a good telescope out, but you can't keep it down. Using data from the now-destroyed Arecibo radio telescope, scientists from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute have unlocked the secrets of signals from "cosmic lighthouses" powered by dead stars.

In particular, the team led by Sofia Sheikh from the SETI Institute was interested in how the signals from pulsars distort as they travel through space. Pulsars are dense stellar remnants called neutron stars that blast out beams of radiation that sweep across the cosmos as they spin. To study how these stars' signals are distorted in space, the team turned to archival data from Arecibo, a 1,000-foot (305-meter) wide suspended radio dish that collapsed on Dec. 1, 2020, after the cables supporting it snapped, punching holes in the dish.