What Makes This Gamma-Ray Burst Even Brighter Than Others?

[meteor]

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996736

This spectacular outburst was a “giant pulse”, something associated with only a few of the known pulsars

The pulse was an order of magnitude brighter than the brightest known gamma-ray burst

 

[meteor]

This thing has intrigued very much, It would be horrible if suddenly a nearby pulsar started to emit giant pulses and scorched Earth, so I have made a bit of investigation.
The thing is that giant pulses were first detected in 1968 by Staelin; there are actually known only 4 pulsars emitting giant pulses, and one of them, the Crab pulsar emits on average a giant pulse every ten seconds. Any idea of what is the mechanism that produces giant pulses?

 

[Chronos]

I think these are otherwise 'normal' pulsars that have a wobbly axis of rotation. When you catch it at just the right angle, you get a tightly focused pulse. I would be curious as to how much polarized they are.. I would guess they are strongly polarized. The pulses are, however, so brief they are hard enough just to detect.

 

[meteor]

It makes sense, Chronos. This paper is interesting because it makes a distinction between giant pulses and giant micropulses
http://xxx.arxiv.cornell.edu/abs/astro-ph/0404174