Word: hewish
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Somewhat belatedly, Astronomer Anthony Hewish, leader of the Cambridge University group that discovered pulsars (TIME, March 15), revealed the positions and the pulse rates of pulsars 2, 3 and 4. One of them blips every 1.27 seconds, another at 1.19-second intervals-close to the 1.34-second period previously reported for pulsar 1. Pulsar 4 pulses significantly faster: every quarter of a second. In addition, Hewish estimated that the fast-pulsing source is only 50 light-years away, compared with the 200-light-year distance he calculated for pulsar...
Blue Star. Using the coordinates given by Hewish, Astronomer Frank Drake trained the giant Arecibo, Puerto Rico, radio telescope on pulsar 3 and discovered that each of its signals was composed of two closely spaced peaks. The peaks were so sharp, he said, that the signal may originate from an object as small as a few hundred miles across; if pulsar 3 were much larger, the peaks would be gradual and less distinct. Using England's Jodrell Bank radio telescope, Astronomer Graham Smith discovered that the radio waves from pulsars are polarized, indicating that they pass through a magnetic...
...highly sensitive radio telescope. Investigating the angular size of a quasar, a pigtailed, 24-year-old Irish graduate student named Jocelyn Bell noticed some strange, pulsating signals that were "so weak they were hard to pinpoint." Working in excited-secrecy, a Mullard Observatory team led by Astronomer Anthony Hewish began an intensive analysis of the pulsations...
...Multiplicity suggests a natural phenomenon," says Astronomer Hewish. "It would be stretching the imagination too far for all of them to be generated by intelligent beings." The Mullard team searched in vain for slight changes in signal frequency that would indicate it came from a planet or a double star system; in orbit around a star, for example, a planetary transmitter would alternately approach and recede from the earth, producing a Doppler effect that would first increase and then decrease the frequency of its signal...