Despite countless observations, the physics of pulsar winds have remained an enigma.

Despite countless observations, the physics of pulsar winds have remained an enigma. Here we had the rare opportunity to see pulsar wind clashing with stellar wind. It is analogous to smashing something open to see what's inside.

The only fact that is crystal clear at the moment is that this is the pulsar system to watch if we want to understand pulsar winds. Never have we seen pulsar wind in such detail. We are continuing with theoretical models now.

I'm disappointed, ... I spent several years there. I was one of the founding members of their Institute for Theoretical Physics. I would have thought they'd be proud to claim me.

At the time of the October Revolution, the Russian intellectual elite had been both a part and a partner to the European conversation about God, power, and human life. After fifty years of purges, arrests, and, most damaging, unrelenting pressure on what had become an isolated thought universe, the Russian intellectual landscape was populated by barely articulated ghosts of once vibrant ideas. Even Communist ideology was a shadow of its former self, a set of ritually repeated words that had lost all meaning.

I think I was always interested in the larger world, even as a kid, and my experiences as a journalist only heightened that interest. Covering conflict, I learned that though leaders often try to create a sense of "us" and "them," the differences are not that delineated. I often felt like it was a whole bunch of "us," with some of "them" scattered around. That made me feel that the borders we draw around ourselves are often artificial.