Princeton University Astroplasmas Seminar - ADDED

The Crab nebula and its pulsar (referred to together as “Crab”) have historically played a central role in astrophysics. True to their legacy, several unique discoveries have been made recently. The Crab was found to emit gamma-ray pulsations up to energies of 400 GeV, beyond what was previously expected from pulsars. Strong gamma-ray flares, of durations of a few days were discovered from within the nebula, while the source was previously expected to be stable in flux on these time scales. In this seminar I will review these intriguing and suggestive developments. I ll give an overview of the observational properties of the Crab and our current theoretical understanding of this system.