[bojan]

Bartman,
the radiation does NOT go FTL.
The only thing that does go FTL here is phase velocity of the wave front and this does not carry any information... Only group velocity of the wave caries information, and this one can't be FTL.
So relativity still works.
It is the mathematical trick actually - in reverse, so to speak.. how the shape of the pulse generated by pulsar can be described in mathematical form.

I am sure there are others on this forum that can explain this much better :-)


Also, personally I believe that there was mis-interpretation in the article, related to inverse square law or just inverse law that governs the intensity of the pulsar beam.
Inverse law may be applicable to short distances (close to pulsar) but definitely not at the distances pulsars are located.
The similar thing applies to laser beams and antennas in general: In close range, intensity of the radiated beam follows different rules (sometimes 1/r).. but once the dispersion of the collimated beam starts (usually couple of wavelengths away) we have always the inverse square law (1/r^2).
In case of pulsars, collimation effect may be happening in much wider space around pulsar (compared to wavelengths of the radiation), but I doubt very much that this could be the case at much more than fraction of AU away from pulsar.