Neutron Stars - with Jocelyn Bell Burnell
The Supermassive Podcast
Izzie Clarke
4.6 • 556 Ratings
🗓️ 26 March 2021
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell gives Izzie and Dr Becky a neutron star 101 and tells them how she discovered pulsars in the 1960s. Plus, Dr Robert Massey takes on your questions and tells us what to look out for in the spring night sky.
Book Club Recommendations
- Forgotten Women: The Scientists - Zing Tsjeng
- Six Impossible Things - John Gribbin
- The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) - Katie Mack
- Vera Rubin: A Life - Jacqueline and Simon Mitton
- Cosmos - Carl Sagan
- The Book Nobody Read - Owen Gingerich
Don't forget to send your questions or space book club recommendations to podcast@ras.ac.uk or tweet @RoyalAstroSoc using #RASSupermassive.
The Supermassive Podcast is a Boffin Media Production by Izzie Clarke and Richard Hollingham.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | How small is the smallest neutron star detective? |
| 0:05.2 | I was tracking down every signal that it picked up, and there was one signal that I couldn't make sense of. |
| 0:12.1 | Neutron stars, famously, had me from neutrons. |
| 0:16.4 | Hello, welcome to the supermassive podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society with me, |
| 0:22.1 | Izzy Clark and astrophysicist Dr Becky Smother. |
| 0:24.9 | Yep, and this month we're looking at neutron stars and pulsars, and we have a very special guest. |
| 0:32.3 | Yeah, absolutely. We've got an interview with the astrophysicist Dameame jocelyn bell venele she gives us a neutron star |
| 0:39.6 | 101 and tells us how she discovered pulsars in the 1960s i mean i know i was just incredible to talk to |
| 0:46.7 | her like i mean she's a legend in the field right but she's also this you know just a huge role model |
| 0:52.3 | for women in science too and i swear i got goosebumps talking to it like she's just this, you know, just a huge role model for women in science too. And I swear, I got goosebumps talking to it. Like, she's just amazing. It's one of those things where we're living in that Zoom life now that I was like, is my background look okay? Like, what does Justin think? It's like, she doesn't care. She doesn't care. And we have our usual, but still very special guest, Robert Massey, the deputy director of the Royal Astronomical Society. |
| 1:15.6 | Robert, how are you doing? |
| 1:16.5 | I'm doing well, and I don't think I'm going to compete with specialness with John. |
| 1:22.3 | We could all try, but we would all fail. |
| 1:25.0 | So we're talking about neutron stars this month. So let's just kick off. |
| 1:29.1 | How far away is the nearest neutron started with? Do you know? Can it be seen sort of with human eyes? |
| 1:34.3 | Yeah. I mean, it's a very interesting question, actually. There seems to be, because they seem to be quite |
| 1:38.0 | hard to measure their distance unless they're, you know, it's not the easiest thing. And the nearest one is a few |
| 1:43.9 | hundred light years away. |
| 1:45.1 | They all have slightly unmemorable catalog names. This one goes by the name of RXJ1-856.5-3754, |
| 1:54.6 | and appears to be about 400. I just kept going that, didn't it? I was expecting it to end, and it just kept going. |
| 1:59.9 | Exactly. And it's, |
| 2:02.8 | it's about 400 light years away and it's, it's magnitude 25.6. So, which is, which if you |
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