Discovery of the First Pulsar

In 1967, British scientists found a much nearer intense radio source turning on and off with astonishing precision, its period constant to ten or more significant figures. What was it? Their first thought was that it was a message intended for us, or maybe an interstellar navigation and timing beacon for spacecraft that ply the space between the stars. They even gave it, among themselves at Cambridge University, the wry designation LGM-1 - LGM standing for Little Green Men.

However, they were wiser than their Soviet counterparts. They did not call a press conference. It soon became clear that what they were observing was what is now called a 'pulsar', the first pulsar to be discovered. So, what's a pulsar? A pulsar is the end state of a massive star, a sun shrunk to the size of a city, held up as no other stars are, not by gas pressure, not by electron degeneracy, but by nuclear forces. It is in a certain sense an atomic nucleus a mile or so across. Now that, I maintain, is a notion at least as bizarre as an interstellar navigation beacon. The answer to what a pulsar is has to be something mighty strange. It isn't an extraterrestrial civilization. It's something else: but a something else that opens our eyes and our minds and indicates unguessed possibilities in Nature. Anthony Hewish won the Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of pulsars.

Notes:

Designated LGM-1 for "Little Green Men" because it gave off a repeating radio signal.

Folksonomies: science wonder discovery

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 The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Sagan , Carl and Druyan , Ann (1997-02-25), The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Ballantine Books, Retrieved on 2011-05-04
Folksonomies: science empiricism rationalism