206 Quasars and Pulsars

and that the quasars must be over a billion light years awaythe most distant objects ever
detected!
But now the dim light of the quasars was too bright for a single star at that distance
often 1,000 times as bright as whole galaxies. Sandage and Schmidt proposed that each
quasar must really be a distant galaxy. However, the measured radio signals varied too
much (on the order of days and hours) to be a galaxy of separate stars. That indicated a compact mass, not a galaxy.
Quasars remained a perplexing mystery until, in 1967, it was proposed that they were
really the material surrounding massive black holes. Quasars instantly became the most interesting and important objects in distant space.
That same year (in July 1967) Cambridge University Astronomy professor Antony
Hewish completed a 4.5-acre radio antenna field to detect radio frequency transmissions
from the farthest corners of space. This gargantuan maze of wire would be the most sensitive radio frequency receiver on Earth.
The radio telescope printed 100 feet of output chart paper each day. Graduate assistant
Jocelyn Bell had the job of analyzing this chart paper. She compared the charts squiggly
lines to the position of known space objects and then compared the known electromagnetic
emissions of these bodies to the charts squiggles and spikes in order to account for each
mark on the chart.
Two months after the telescope started up, Bell noticed an unusual, tight-packed pattern of lines that she called a bit of scruffa squiggling pattern she couldnt explain. She
marked it with a question mark and moved on.
Four nights later, she saw the same pattern. One month later she found the same pattern
of scruff and recognized that the antenna was focused on the same small slice of sky. She
took the extra time to expand and measure the squiggles. Whatever it was, this radio signal
regularly pulsed every 1 1/3 seconds. No natural body in the known universe emitted regular signals like that.
Before Hewish publicly announced their discovery, Bell found another bit of scruff on
chart printouts from a different part of the sky. The pulses of this second signal came 1.2
seconds apart and at almost the exact same frequency.
Every theoretician at Cambridge was brought in to explain Jocelyns scruff. After
months of study and calculation the science team concluded that Bell had discovered
super-dense, rotating stars. Astronomers had mathematically theorized that when a huge
star runs out of nuclear fuel, all matter in the star collapsed inward, creating a gigantic
explosion, called a supernova.
What remained became a hundred million times denser than ordinary matter a neutron star. If the star rotated, its magnetic and electric fields would broadcast beams of powerful radio waves. From Earth, a rapidly rotating neutron star would appear to pulse and so
these were named pulsars.
Fun Facts: The more distant the quasar is, the redder its light appears on
Earth. The light from the most distant quasar known takes 13 billion
light-years to reach Earth. Thirteen billion light-years is how far away
that quasar was 13 billion years ago when the light we now see first left
the star and headed toward where Earth is now. Quasars are the most distant objects in the universe.

More to Explore 207

More to Explore
Asimov, Isaac. Black Holes, Pulsars, and Quasars. New York: Gareth Stevens, 2003.
McGrayne, Sharon. Nobel Prize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles, and Momentous Discoveries. New York: Carol Publishing Group, A Birch Lane Press
Book, 1993.
Raymo, Chet. 365 Starry Nights: An Introduction to Astronomy for Every Night of the
Year. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.
Schaaf, Fred. The Amateur Astronomer: Explorations and Investigations. New York:
Franklin Watts, 1994.
Stille, Darlene R. Extraordinary Women Scientists. Chicago: Childrens Press, 1995.