2026-07-15 11:19 UTC
She noted some “scruff” on her chart-recorder, & that pulses were regular, occurring every 1.337 seconds. Hewish was initially scornful & insisted regular pulses must be noise from a human made source. He dubbed this object ‘LGM 1’ for “Little Green Men 1”, a playful joke about their uncertainty about what could emit radiation so regularly -obviously it could only be a communication from extraterrestrials haha! After she found other such sources, in different places with different frequencies, 🧵
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@minouette@spore.social 2026-07-15 11:20
were her colleagues convinced & this lead to the development of the pulsar model. It is now known PSR B1919+21. The 1968 paper announcing this discovery in Nature has five authors, lead by Hewish, followed by Bell. In 1974, Hewish won the Nobel Prize for this discovery, along with fellow radioastronomer Martin Ryle). That Jocelyn Bell was not included has been condemned by many leading astronomers. Not only the discovery, but the presentation of the data (by 🧵3/