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A Century of IdeasThe Wonders of Pulsars

A Century of Ideas: The Wonders of Pulsars [The discovery of Pulsars in 1967 was for me a great surprise because the research I was then doing was not aimed at discovering a new kind of star. I was then engaged in the branch of Radio Astronomy, which was to do with the study of quasars. In the early 1950s it was discovered that there are galaxies that emit powerful radio waves. Often they are only detectable by the radio waves, not by their optical emission and these radio galaxies were giving us new information about the past history of the universe. Quasars are a particularly active type of radio galaxy in which enormous quantities of energy are produced in a small volume at the centre and understanding them was a key problem. But we did not always know which radio galaxies were quasars. By then there were many hundreds known but radio telescopes were rather poor in those days at imaging radio galaxies and we had little idea how large they were, or whether they contained these active centres which are typical of quasars.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Century of IdeasThe Wonders of Pulsars

Part of the Fundamental Theories of Physics Book Series (volume 149)
Editors: Sidharth, B. G.
Hewish, Antony
A Century of Ideas — Jan 1, 2008
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9 pages

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Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Copyright
© Springer Netherlands 2008
ISBN
978-1-4020-4359-8
Pages
55 –64
DOI
10.1007/978-1-4020-4360-4_6
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[The discovery of Pulsars in 1967 was for me a great surprise because the research I was then doing was not aimed at discovering a new kind of star. I was then engaged in the branch of Radio Astronomy, which was to do with the study of quasars. In the early 1950s it was discovered that there are galaxies that emit powerful radio waves. Often they are only detectable by the radio waves, not by their optical emission and these radio galaxies were giving us new information about the past history of the universe. Quasars are a particularly active type of radio galaxy in which enormous quantities of energy are produced in a small volume at the centre and understanding them was a key problem. But we did not always know which radio galaxies were quasars. By then there were many hundreds known but radio telescopes were rather poor in those days at imaging radio galaxies and we had little idea how large they were, or whether they contained these active centres which are typical of quasars.]

Published: Jan 1, 2008

Keywords: Solar Wind; Neutron Star; Gravitational Wave; Radio Telescope; Radio Galaxy

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