> Occam's razer also says we should not have different laws of physics in different places.
You're starting from an odd place if you're assuming that's the case. There's absolutely no reason to believe the laws of physics are different in this star's case compared to any other we've seen. It's an absurd leap to believe aliens are at work here rather than this being yet another case of our knowledge of physics being incomplete.
If we interpret Occam's razor as to "choose the simplest solution with the greatest explaining power," then the "solution" may be to admit that we have an inadequate understanding of how these things physically work.
This doesn't rule out the possibility of a technological origin, but I think Ben's point is that we should explore possiblities that generate more answers than questions first.
No, there’s nothing except the fact that the "laws of physics", ie. our models of nature, are eternally incomplete simplifications. All that’s going on is that our models have a prediction error and thus tell us we’ve failed to take something into account. Which is an utterly standard part of scientific progress. Papers will be written, hypotheses proposed, more evidence gathered, and after some number of years we’ll have a new, more complete theory of neutron star evolution and/or emission processes.
Something very interesting is going on here.