Lesson Five : The Discovery of the Pulsar
While scientists were initially skeptical of neutron stars, further research lead to more widespread conviction of their existence. Experimental proof, however, would not come until 33 years after Zwicky and Baade's first proposal.In 1967, Jocelyn Bell was doing graduate research in radio astronomy at Cambridge University under advisor Anthony Hewish. She unexpectedly detected regular radio pulses from the sky with a period of about 1.3 seconds. They named these sources pulsars, short for pulsating radio star.
Jocelyn Bell with the original data she collected leading to the discovery of the pulsar.
At first, they believed these pulses were coming from an unnatural, man-made radio source. Eventually, however, they realized these radio pulses were coming from outer space. Bell and Hewish were astounded by the regularity of the objects pulses and jokingly referred to the signals as the first transmission received from an advanced alien civilization. Consequently, the first discovered pulsars were named LGM 1, LGM 2, LGM 3, and LGM 4, with LGM denoting Little Green Men.