Prof. Jim Cordes (Cornell University)

Structure in the Milky Way’s interstellar medium exists on scales from kpc down to about 1000 km, the smallest of these probed by radio scattering measurements of pulsars, masers, AGNs, and FRBs. I will summarize the rich landscape of phenomena and their usage as tools for probing interstellar turbulence and shock interfaces in the Milky Way and in the host galaxies of FRBs, as well as for measuring FRB sources sizes. The ISM is deleterious for the precision timing of Galactic pulsars used to detect gravitational waves from supermassive black hole binaries. I will review the current limitations on precision timing and the prospects for further mitigation of interstellar effects to improve detection and localization of individual binaries. Interstellar scintillation also impacts radio searches for signals from ET, which I will also summarize briefly.