I love thriller films, especially if they have a touch of the exotic about them. Maybe it’s coincidence, but two of best I’ve watched recently, ‘Gravity’ and ‘Interstellar’ have the added interest of being set in space and are heavily spiced with references to astrophysics. While ‘Gravity’ stays close to earth and relatively within the bounds of realism, ‘Interstellar’ is a mind-boggling blend of sci-fi and apocalypse, involving travel through worm holes, black holes and time itself. All good fun, and it certainly exercised my imagination!
Astrophysics aside, it was the pivotal female scientist characters who stayed in my mind most All just fiction maybe – but it inspired me to do a little research on modern day women astronomers. There are plenty of women making massive contributions to our understanding of the universe.
Historic discovery
One of the most interesting to me is Jocelyn Bell Burnell, a prominent and active astrophysicist with an impressve career spanning several decadea Most famously, she was a leading member of the team that in 1968 discovered the first pulsar (a spinning neutron star emitting regular elecotromagnetic pulses), a discovery that earned the Nobel Prize for her supervisor, although Bell Burnell herself was excluded from the prize. At early stages in the research it was thought possible that the rapid sets of pulses at regular intervals could be extra-terrestrial communication, and she even named them ‘LGM’ (Little Green Men) at one stage, but from their position in the sky it finally became clear to her that they were from a unique type of star.
So why was her discovery of pulsars so important? The regularity of a pulsar signal is extremely precise, which makes them important tools for a variety of astronomical research. For example, observations of a pulsar provided indirect evidence for Einstein’s theory of relativity, in particular an effect known as gravitational waves, decades after he predicted their existence. Despite intense research efforts, gravitational waves have not yet been directly observed, but the race is on, and this is currently a hot topic in astronomy.
And the recent discovery by NASA’s NuStar telescope of a powerful pulsar where a black hole was thought to be, producing X-rays strong enough for a black hole, should contribute to our understanding of how black holes develop. Time travel through black holes may not be on the agenda – but future discoveries could well turn out to be much more fascinating than fiction.
http://cwp.library.ucla.edu/Phase2/Burnell,[email protected]
Biography of Professor Bell Burnell
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009sgnl
Professor Bell Burnell explains the use of pulsars to detect gravitational waves
http://astronomynow.com/2015/03/31/race-to-detect-gravitational-waves-intensifies/
Recent developments in the use of pulsars in the search for gravitational waves
http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/nustar/pia18841/#.VUsoSJMqQvQ
NuStar's observation of a pulsar in place of a black hole
1. NASA/CXC/PSU/G Pavlov et al http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/objects/heapow/archive/compact_objects/vela_pulsar_jet.html
2. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SAO/NOAO http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/nustar/pia18841/#.VUsoSJMqQvQ