inexplicable

When the public-relations machine kicks into high gear, every news outlet in the world decides independently that all you need is more breathless coverage of this one and only important thing. Like this summer, you don’t hear about anything but GPM J1839–10. That’s this deep space object that emits bursts of radio energy like a pulsar but at much longer intervals which makes it unique and inexplicable. According to John Timmer, a science writer with a way with words, “The list of known objects that can produce this sort of behavior is short and consists of precisely zero items.”