Paulo Freire

A pulsar is a dead star spinning at breakneck speed, sending out radio pulses like a lighthouse. Usually these pulses arrive right on schedule, but occasionally there are true monsters among them — giant pulses that are thousands of times brighter than normal.

Imagine two neutron stars, compressed to the size of a metropolis yet weighing one and a half Suns each. They whirl in an unrestrained gravitational dance, drawing together and flying apart every 4.4 hours. At periastron — the point of closest approach — only a couple of light-seconds separate them, and their speed reaches three and a half million kilometers per hour.