The latest and greatest outbursts from the Crab Nebula — long known for its steady high-energy glow — are challenging theories about how the heavens accelerate charged particles to high energies.
Only last year, scientists were astonished to find that the nebula — a giant cloud 6,500 light-years from Earth with the spinning cinder of an exploded star at its center — had spat out gamma-ray flares that fluctuated on time scales of only a few days (
SN: 1/1/11, p.
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