Pulsars, Microwave Ovens and the Radio Sky

There have been two major revolutions in how we look at the sky – the shift beyond the optical to other wavelengths, particularly the radio, and the increasing attention paid to how objects change over time.

The talk started with the discovery of pulsars by Jocelyn Bell Burnell, explored how a microwave oven bamboozled astronomers, and discussed the latest research on Fast Radio Bursts, mysterious events detected in galaxies billions of light-years away.

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/sites/default/files/transcript/2024-02-21-1800_Lintott-T.pdf

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1904814/14623557-pulsars-microwave-ovens-and-the-radio-sky-chris-lintott?client_source=small_player&iframe=true

Further Reading

Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/dec/18/scientists-looking-for-aliens-investigate-radio-beam-from-nearby-star

The mystery was resolved by Sheikh et al: https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.06350

History of Radio Astronomy

Much of this material is included in Prof. Lintott’s book, Our Accidental Universe, which is out next month (!). See also G. Verschuur: The Invisible Universe: The Story of Radio Astronomy, Spinger, 2015.

K. I. Kellermann, “Grote Reber (1911–2002): A Radio Astronomy Pioneer,” in The New Astronomy: Opening the Electromagnetic Window and Expanding Our View of Planet Earth: A Meeting to Honor Woody Sullivan on his 60th Birthday, ed. W. Orchiston, vol. 334, Astrophysics and Space Science Library (Springer, 2005),

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/1-4020-3724-4_4.

See also W. Sullivan, ed., The Early Years of Radio Astronomy: Reflections Fifty Years after Jansky’s Discovery (Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Sag A

The crucial paper identifying Sag A* as a compact source is Balick & Brown 1974: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1974ApJ…194..265B/abstract

Background to the EHT observations of Sag A* is given here: https://aasnova.org/2022/05/12/first-image-of-the-milky-ways-supermassive-black-hole/ along with links to the crucial papers.

Pulsars

Jocelyn’s detection of pulsars is described in a Cambridge historical note here: https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/journeysofdiscovery-pulsars

A first hand description of the discovery of pulsar planets is here: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012NewAR..56….2W/abstract

The original binary pulsar discovery paper, by Hulse & Taylor, is very readable: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1975ApJ…195L..51H/abstract

And there’s background from when they were awarded the Nobel Prize here:

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1975ApJ…195L..51H/abstract

Microwaves and Perytons are discussed in Petroff et al 2015: https://arxiv.org/abs/1504.02165

FRBs:

Summed up by XKCD here: https://xkcd.com/2886/ and in a recent review by the pioneers of the field: https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.10113

MeerKaT galactic centre images described here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.10541

Professor Chris Lintott

Professor Chris Lintott is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford, and a Research Fellow at New College.

Having been educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge and University College London, his research now ranges from understanding how galaxies form and evolve, to using machine learning to find the most unusual things in the Universe, to predicting the properties of visiting interstellar asteroids. He is Principal Investigator of the Zooniverse citizen science platform, which provides opportunities for more than two million online volunteers to contribute to scientific research, and which was the topic of his first book, ‘The Crowd and the Cosmos’.

Professor Lintott is best known as presenter of the BBC’s long-running Sky at Night program, and as an accomplished lecturer. Away from work, he cooks, suffers through being a fan of Torquay United and Somerset cricket, and spends time with a rescued lurcher, Mr Max, with whom he presents the Dog Stars podcast.