Sunday, August 19, 2007

Air Force discovers pulsars before Bell

You've probably already seen this, but it's interesting:

http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2007/08/schisler.php

The Air Force early warning radars for the Arctic inadvertently discovered the pulsar before Jocelyn Bell Burnell did in 1967. This joins gamma-ray bursts and adaptive optics as another "thing invented or discovered by the military" before astronomers re-invented or discovered them.
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2 comments:

  1. Jennifer8/21/2007 4:28 PM

    AO sort of makes sense, but GRBs?

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  2. Dean W. Armstrong8/21/2007 4:37 PM

    The Vela satellites were looking for gamma-rays from nuclear bursts on the Earth, but instead found them coming from the other direction.

    ReplyDelete