Historical records from around the world describe a bright star appearing in the sky in the year 1054. Today, astronomers are confident that what our ancestors were seeing was, in truth, a star that had gone supernova.
But this wasn't just any supernova. It was a supernova that would eventually lead to the formation of the Crab Nebula — a collage of interstellar gas and dust illuminated by the energy expelled during the death throes of a rapidly contracting nuclear furnace.The star in question would eventually become a pulsar — a rapidly rotating neutron star — sending pulses of electromagnetic radiation out into the ether. What's more, this particular pulsar seems to emit a "zebra"' pattern in the high-frequency band of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is unlike any other pulsar researchers have observed thus far.
