Word: pulsars
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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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...
After remaining silent about the discovery for seven months, the Cambridge team published its findings and tentative conclusions in Nature, setting off a flurry of activity among U.S. scientists. Focusing Cornell University's giant radio telescope near Arecibo, Puerto Rico, on the one pulsar whose position was given by the British, Astronomer Frank Drake confirmed the rapid, regular signal and discovered that it was ten times as powerful at 111 MH (for megahertz: 1,000,000 cycles per second) than at any other frequency. "This has been the biggest bombshell that I can remember in radio astronomy," he says...
Oftentimes Overdone. U.S. scientists have already devised a host of theories about pulsars. Yeshiva University Astrophysicist A.G.W. Cameron and Caltech Astronomer John B. Oke believe the mysterious objects may be white dwarfs, Cameron suggesting that their frequency of oscillation is actually a harmonic of the lower frequency assigned to dwarfs by current theory. U.S. Naval Research Physicist Herbert Friedman of the U.S. Naval Research Lab oratory and Cornell Astronomer Thomas Gold support the neutron-star hypothesis. Gold speculates that the first pulsar identified may be an extremely dense body as small as six to 60 miles in diameter that rotates...
...Oftentimes this intelligent-civilization bit has been overdone," says Astronomer Schmidt, "but if you want to attribute anything to a civilization, then this is the best case we have had so far." The chance that pulsar signals do come from an intelligent race, agrees Arecibo's Drake, "does remain a possibility." At week's end, Cambridge astronomers reported in a second Nature article that a faint blue star had been tentatively identified as one of the pulsars, providing still another clue that may eventually help solve astronomy's latest and most exciting enigma...