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Astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsars, not aliens
Tuesday, March 28, 2000
Jocelyn Bell Burnell is an astronomer who briefly thought she had actually made contact with extraterrestrial beings.
Burnell was born in Ireland in 1943. She earned a degree in physics from Glasgow University in Scotland and her doctorate in astronomy in 1969 from Cambridge University in England. While a graduate student at Cambridge, Burnell discovered a new type of object.
Burnell was working with advisor Anthony Hewish at the time of the discovery. She and other graduate students were responsible for constructing a large radio telescope to detect exotic radio signal sources called quasars. Burnell was responsible for the telescope's operation and for studying the data it gathered.
In late summer 1967, she began to notice strange signals. She was detecting a star-like object that was sending a repeating signal every 1.3 seconds. The signals seemed artificial, possibly the broadcast of intelligent beings. They began to refer to the source as the LGM, for "little green men."
Burnell, though, had doubts. She began to use the telescope to hunt for other similar signals.
Soon, she found three more sources that had the same rapid-fire pattern. That ended the LGM idea. It was unlikely that many aliens were all signaling us in the same way at the same time.
In 1968, Hewish, Burnell and others published a paper suggesting these signals came from rapidly spinning objects left over from the massive explosion of stars. Today these incredible objects are called pulsars.
-- By John G. Radzilowicz, director, Henry Buhl, Jr. Planetarium & Observatory
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