by Stacy Palen.

In September of 2018, Jocelyn Bell Burnell won a $3 million prize in recognition of her outstanding discovery of pulsars. This article presents an opportunity to link science and society while recalling and applying information about radio telescopes, the motion of the sky, and pulsars.

Article: https://www.npr.org/2018/09/06/645257118/in-1974-they-gave-the-nobel-to-her-supervisor-now-shes-won-a-3-million-prize

Questions for Students:

1. It may be difficult to visualize the data Bell Burnell was taking from the radio telescope. The chart recorder used to record the data is very similar to a seismometer, a machine that records earthquakes. The radio telescope chart recorder scrolled through 96 feet of paper every day. How much paper did Bell Burnell use for the month of observations between when the blip vanished and when it returned?
   
   Answer: 30 days * 96 feet per day = 2,880 ft
   
   
2. Why did Hewish think the signal must be man-made?
   
   Answer: He thought it must be a man-made radio interference because the signal disappeared and then reappeared.
   
   
3. Bell Burnell figured out the signals were coming from space. What observation about the pulses led her to that conclusion?
   
   Answer: Bell Burnell observed that the source moved at the same speed as the stars.
   
   
4. Prior to Bell Burnell’s discovery, astronomers thought that neutron stars might not be observable. Why might neutron stars be difficult to observe?
   
   Answer: Neutron stars might be difficult to observe because they are incredibly small. Even if they are very hot, they will not be very bright.
   
   
5. What is it about Bell Burnell’s discovery that earned her the Breakthrough Prize?
   
   Answer: No one had ever dreamed that an object could act in this way.
   
   
6.  Some people in the scientific community see this award as righting a long-standing wrong. Does Bell Burnell see it that way?
   
   Answer: No, actually. She seems to be perfectly fine with it. But then, she’s giving all the prize money to promote diversity and fight unconscious bias. So maybe she’s just being graceful.
   
   
7. According to Bell Burnell, why did she not receive the Nobel Prize in 1974?
   
   Answer: Bell Burnell says that at that time, the committee was not awarding early career scientists.
   
   
8. Do you think that was a fair decision of the Nobel committee?
   
   Answers will vary.
   
   

Share your own questions in the comments!

by Stacy Palen.

Until the result discussed in the article linked below, only two distinct neutrino sources were known: the Sun and Supernova 1987a. Now there is a third: a distant blazar.

This article complements material about active galactic nuclei, neutrinos, scientific instrumentation, and the process of science. Following are some questions that I thought of as I read the article. Share your own (with answers!) in the comments.

Article: https://www.eso.org/public/blog/pinpointing-the-source/

1. What is a blazar?
   
   Answer: A blazar is a particular kind of active galaxy in which the jet points at Earth.
   
   
2. A blazar is a little bit similar to a pulsar, but not exactly the same. Compare and contrast the two objects.
   
   Answer: A blazar is detected by the emission coming from its jet. In this way, it is something like a pulsar, which is observed when its jets point toward Earth. The pulsar, however, is much smaller and spins rapidly so that the jet points toward Earth only some of the time.
   
   
3. You have learned that there are many, many neutrinos passing through a human body in one second: 100 trillion, just from the Sun. How many neutrinos were detected from this blazar?
   
   Answer: Only one neutrino was detected! It is somewhat surprising that one neutrino out of so many can be important.
   
   
4. How many different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum were observed in this project? What are they?
   
   Answer: Five regions of the electromagnetic spectrum were observed: gamma ray, radio, infrared, optical, and X-ray.
   
   
5. This discovery is an example of what astronomers sometimes call "multi-messenger astronomy." What do they mean by that? If the neutrino had not been detected, would the discovery still be "multi-messenger?"
   
   Answer: Multi-messenger astronomy means that astronomers are getting information about an object from light (electromagnetic radiation) AND another source, like neutrinos or gravitational waves. If the neutrino had not been detected, this would not have been multi-messenger because all the other detections were made from observations of light.
   
   
6. Why has a blazar like this never been discovered before? Do you expect to see more discoveries in the future? Why or why not?
   
   Answer: Astronomers did not have equipment capable of discovering these neutrinos until IceCube became operational just a few years ago.
   
   
7. This discovery took many people working together, at many different facilities. The end of the article focuses on some of the difficulties and advantages of this approach. Describe one difficulty and one advantage of involving many scientists, particularly different kinds of scientists, in a scientific project.
   
   Answers will vary.