September 06, 2018
In 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell was a graduate student at Cambridge, working on a dissertation about strange objects in distant galaxies known as quasars.
She and her supervisor, Antony Hewish, had built a radio telescope to observe them. Data from the telescope scrolled out from a machine — a line in red ink, scrawling across 96 feet of chart paper each day.
In 1974, They Gave The Nobel To Her Supervisor. Now Shes Won A $3 Million Prize
As she pored over the data, she noticed something strange: "an unclassifiable squiggle," she recalls. It indicated mysterious radio waves, pulsing repeatedly.
She says she noticed the unusual signal only because she suffered from impostor syndrome: the idea that you're not good enough and at any moment, you may be discovered as a fraud. For Bell Burnell, it manifested as a fear she would be tossed out of Cambridge, she told The Guardian.
So she took more data from the telescope and kept scouring — but the blip vanished. A month later, the signal returned.
Bell Burnell brought the results to Hewish.
"He said, 'That settles it, it's manmade, it's artificial radio interference,'" she recounted to the newspaper. But she knew it couldn't be interference: The radio waves were coming from something moving at the same speed as the stars — meaning the source of the pulses had to be in space.
The dense objects responsible for the squiggles are now known as pulsars – rapidly spinning neutron stars that emit radiation. Their observation is considered one of the one of the greatest astronomical discoveries of the 20th century.
"The excitement was because this was a totally unexpected, totally new kind of object, behaving in a way that astronomers had never expected, never dreamt of," she said in a 2010 BBC documentary.
The discovery of pulsars was so important that it won a 1974 Nobel Prize – for Hewish.
Bell Burnell has said it doesn't bother her much that she wasn't included. "[I]n those days students weren't recognized by the committee," she said in 2009.
Fifty years after Bell Burnell noticed that blip in the red ink, her observation has earned her a very big award: a Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, which comes with a check for $3 million.
The Breakthrough Prizes, funded by Silicon Valley figures including Sergey Brin, Yuri Milner, and Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, are the largest monetary science prizes in the world.
"Jocelyn Bell Burnell's discovery of pulsars will always stand as one of the great surprises in the history of astronomy," Edward Witten, the chair of the committee, said in a statement. "Until that moment, no one had any real idea how neutron stars could be observed, if indeed they existed. Suddenly it turned out that nature has provided an incredibly precise way to observe these objects, something that has led to many later advances."
Previous winners of the prize include Stephen Hawking, scientists at CERN involved in the discovery of the Higgs boson, and physicists in the LIGO collaboration who detected gravitational waves.
Bell Burnell is donating her prize winnings to the U.K.'s Institute of Physics, where they will fund graduate scholarships for people from under-represented groups to study physics.
"I don't want or need the money myself and it seemed to me that this was perhaps the best use I could put to it," she told the BBC, adding that she wants to use the money to counter the "unconscious bias" that she says happens in physics research jobs.
The astrophysicist noted there has been an upside to the Nobel snub all those years ago.
"I feel I've done very well out of not getting a Nobel prize," she told the Guardian. "If you get a Nobel prize you have this fantastic week and then nobody gives you anything else. If you don't get a Nobel prize you get everything that moves. Almost every year there's been some sort of party because I've got another award. That's much more fun."


Top news around the world
Academy Awards

‘Oppenheimer’ Reigns at Oscars With Seven Wins, Including Best Picture and Director

Get the latest news about the 2024 Oscars, including nominations, winners, predictions and red carpet fashion at 96th Academy Awards

Around the World

Celebrity News

> Latest News in Media

Watch It
Olivia Munn Reveals Breast Cancer Diagnosis and Double Mastectomy Procedure | E! News
March 13, 2024
kUaEV1Kd3S0
Travis Kelce Shares Details From His Trip to Singapore With Taylor Swift | E! News
March 13, 2024
3YXi-Dgf4eg
Kate Middleton VIRAL Photo: Agency Addresses Photoshop Claims | E! News
March 13, 2024
S4VkO0TpkCY
Da'Vine Joy Randolph Plays 'Smash or Pass' With Iconic Moments From Her Career
March 13, 2024
vkPdJEF2BX4
Jean Smart Wears a Hotel Bathrobe to Present an Award to Hannah Einbinder l Power of Comedy SxSW
March 12, 2024
Bw7uVEYQev4
Lenny Kravitz Walk of Fame Ceremony
March 12, 2024
MlWq8BcnwhE
Dak Prescott Extortion Plot & Steph Curry for President? | TMZ Sports Full Ep - 3/12/24
March 13, 2024
jHFsrjs7OFY
A Japanese space rocket blew up after takeoff Tuesday, turning the sky into a fireball of smoke.
March 13, 2024
YkfJ3Qg8B7c
#KimKardashian and #BiancaCensori hung out at #KanyeWest's listening party Tuesday night!
March 13, 2024
EfwLLq6bx9k
‘Pioneer Woman’ Ree Drummond denies using Ozempic to lose 60 pounds
March 13, 2024
Omfjk1AlZ3A
Chrissy Teigen reveals her ‘boob lift scars’ in daring dress at Jay-Z & Beyoncé’s Oscars 2024 party
March 13, 2024
VxZ2qXAlpmU
Zoë Kravitz pokes fun at dad Lenny Kravitz's style during Hollywood Walk of Fame speech
March 13, 2024
j3-lcFu_1sQ
TV Schedule
Late Night Show
Watch the latest shows of U.S. top comedians

Sports

Latest sport results, news, videos, interviews and comments
Latest Events
17
Mar
SPAIN: La Liga
Atletico Madrid - Barcelona
17
Mar
ENGLAND: FA Cup
Manchester United - Liverpool
17
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
Inter Milan - Napoli
17
Mar
GERMANY: Bundesliga
Borussia Dortmund - Eintracht Frankfurt
17
Mar
ENGLAND: FA Cup
Chelsea - Leicester City
17
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
Roma - Sassuolo
17
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
Verona - AC Milan
17
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
Juventus - Genoa
17
Mar
GERMANY: Bundesliga
SC Freiburg - Bayer Leverkusen
17
Mar
USA: Major League Soccer
Atlanta United - Orlando City
17
Mar
ENGLAND: Premier League
West Ham United - Aston Villa
17
Mar
SPAIN: La Liga
Rayo Vallecano - Real Betis
17
Mar
ENGLAND: Championship
Leeds - Millwall
17
Mar
SPAIN: La Liga
Las Palmas - Almeria
17
Mar
SPAIN: La Liga
Villarreal - Valencia
17
Mar
SPAIN: La Liga
Sevilla - Celta Vigo
16
Mar
GERMANY: Bundesliga
Darmstadt - Bayern Munich
16
Mar
ENGLAND: FA Cup
Manchester City - Newcastle United
16
Mar
ENGLAND: Premier League
Fulham - Tottenham Hotspur
16
Mar
SPAIN: La Liga
Osasuna - Real Madrid
13
Mar
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: 1/8 Final
Atletico Madrid - Inter Milan
12
Mar
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: 1/8 Final
Barcelona - Napoli
12
Mar
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: 1/8 Final
Arsenal - Porto
11
Mar
ENGLAND: Premier League
Chelsea - Newcastle United
10
Mar
ENGLAND: Premier League
Liverpool - Manchester City
10
Mar
SPAIN: La Liga
Real Madrid - Celta Vigo
10
Mar
ENGLAND: Premier League
Aston Villa - Tottenham Hotspur
10
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
Juventus - Atalanta
10
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
Fiorentina - Roma
10
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
AC Milan - Empoli
09
Mar
GERMANY: Bundesliga
Werder Bremen - Borussia Dortmund
09
Mar
ENGLAND: Premier League
Arsenal - Brentford
09
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
Bologna - Inter Milan
Find us on Instagram
at @feedimo to stay up to date with the latest.
Featured Video You Might Like
zWJ3MxW_HWA L1eLanNeZKg i1XRgbyUtOo -g9Qziqbif8 0vmRhiLHE2U JFCZUoa6MYE UfN5PCF5EUo 2PV55f3-UAg W3y9zuI_F64 -7qCxIccihU pQ9gcOoH9R8 g5MRDEXRk4k
Copyright © 2020 Feedimo. All Rights Reserved.