In 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell identified a remarkably regular radio signal while working with Antony Hewish at Cambridge. Pulsars are rotating neutron stars whose beams sweep past an observer, producing repeated pulses. They belong here because a strange signal opened a way to study dense stellar remnants and precise cosmic timing. The Crab Nebula image illustrates a later-studied pulsar environment, not the source of Bell Burnell’s original discovery.
Source: Pulsars reveal rotating neutron stars.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University) · Public domain. Resized and JPEG compressed.
