The Sky at Night Catch up, Queen of Pulsars on BBC 4

The Sky at Night

Queen of Pulsars

Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell is a discoverer and an explorer of the distant cosmos, and she has walked among the stars. She discovered the first pulsar in 1967 - a discovery so important in our understanding of the universe that it would earn a Nobel Prize. But Jocelyn didn’t receive it. \n\nAll her life a deep thinker, a dedicated Quaker and a fierce advocate for equal opportunity in physics, Jocelyn has carved an astonishing career doing and communicating science, changing the face of astronomy as a result.\n\nJocelyn was determined to succeed in an environment not made for her, and her story resonates with young and old, student and professor - and anyone who has ever felt like they may not really belong.\n\nIn this film, we hear Jocelyn’s story direct from the subject herself and learn how, from the small town of Lurgan in Northern Ireland, she rose to worldwide recognition. It is a tale of determination and triumph against the prejudice and misogyny of the time. \n\nAlongside the history are the enigmas themselves: pulsars. The conditions surrounding these objects make them the most extreme laboratories in the cosmos, uniting the most complex and cutting-edge physics under one roof. Matter crushed down into its densest form, encased within extreme magnetic fields - and they are even telling us the secrets of the very make-up of our universe. Some flavours of these objects are so dramatic that just one outburst can briefly outshine an entire galaxy.\n\nWith Dr Vanessa Graber from Royal Holloway, University of London, Maggie delves into the concealed interiors of pulsars and the exotic states of matter that form them. With superfluids of neutrons hosting quantum tornados and searing hundred-million-degree plasma, pulsars are not the once-predictable characters we thought them.\n\nChris, meanwhile, is at the University of Oxford with Dr Kaustubh Rajwade, studying the oddballs of the pulsar family and how to decode their messages. As a blast of radiation travels from a pulsar to our detectors, the history of its journey through the universe is imprinted on the signal. We learn how to use this to see the unseen - the parts of the cosmos that are almost impossible for us to observe - revealing its detailed structure for the first time.\n\nIn conversation, Jocelyn joins PhD student Aida Seye to discuss shared passions and challenges in chasing cosmic dreams. Aida is a recipient of the Bell Burnell Graduate Scholarship Fund, instigated by Jocelyn to support PhD students from underrepresented groups. Aida is studying the structure of the Milky Way, with the aim of bringing us closer to solving the mystery of dark matter.

Source: BBC 4

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