Pulsars have long drawn the attention of the scientific community since their discovery in 1967. These mostly have been known to emit radiations in gamma, radio and X-ray wavelengths. What if we get a similar signal from space, but in a different wavelength, say infrared?

Here we got two teams working on the origins of these ‘High energy infrared’ signals and suggest a possible, physically consistent entity emitting it. The discussion started with a binary star system, but as the mentioned time period of the signal was in seconds, it was finally thought to be a pulsar. Though we don’t find any regular pulsar giving out such signals, we concluded that this can be explained by two hypotheses, namely the fallback disk hypothesis or it being a pulsar wind nebula.

Thinking of pulsar wind nebulae, which are typically seen in X-ray, finding one in infrared would surely be interesting (discovery is still awaited).

It has been observed that while clicking a photograph (using your mobile mostly), sometimes a pattern is observed while zooming in and out, known as Moiré patterns. Moiré patterns effectively occur when viewing a set of lines or dots that is superimposed on another set of lines or dots, where the sets differ in relative size, angle or spacing.

Investigating upon the phenomenon in our case, it was noted that the pixel structure of the LCD screen conflicts with the pixel structure of the photograph or video tapping on our mobile phones, since the LCD screen of our computers have lower pixel density and larger pixel size than the resolution of our mobile phone camera. The visual appearance of these patterns depend mostly on the pixel density and on the location of the cell phones.

Working further, it was noticed that the visual appearance of these patterns depend mostly on the pixel density and on the location of the cell phones; and these patterns vanish if we somehow change the pixel size and density of the photo.

Ever seen an X-pattern on a TV screen, when you flash any light on it? This daily life phenomenon can be explained by the effects of diffraction grating. But the problem was to know what causes this effect.

Three groups worked on this problem, studied the various details of the pattern and concluded some reasons for this observation. Generally, an X-shaped diffraction pattern is expected when the diffracting body is helical or double helical, or any body whose two-dimensional manifestation is X-shaped.

Although it was speculated by one team that the internal structure (helical arrangement of glass rods or polarizers) was responsible for the diffraction pattern, it was verified by an opponent team that even the cover screen alone (for a phone screen) showed similar patterns. It was also noted that different screens showed differences in the pattern upon flashing light on it.