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The practice of science
has shaped the modern era.

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But how are discoveries made?

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And how does science progress?

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Three British scientists,
world leaders in their fields,

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have changed our understanding
of our universe, our planet

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and ourselves.

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A physicist, whose mysterious
radio signals from space

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rewrote astronomy.

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She actually recognised that
there was something happening.

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I suspect that perhaps only one
in 100 people would have spotted it.

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A chemist, whose radical theory
about our planet

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divides the scientific world.

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He's one of the greatest
thinkers of the current age,

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and destined to go down in history.

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And a biologist, who discovered
the secret of life in a sea urchin.

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Your fundamental discoveries have
profoundly increased

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our understanding
of how the cell cycle is controlled.

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Their stories tell us about the
nature of scientific inquiry

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in the modern world.

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About how scientific
breakthroughs are made.

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And about the workings
of the scientific brain.

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Scientists should never claim
that something is absolutely true.

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You should never claim
perfect or total or 100%,

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because you never, ever get there.

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If we assume we have arrived,
we stop searching.

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We stop developing.

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In 1967, a PhD student
called Jocelyn Bell

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noticed something
that shouldn't happen.

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Strange, regular flashes of energy
emanating from deep space.

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She had discovered
completely new types of stars

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that came to be known as pulsars.

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You were responsible for spotting

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the very first pulsar personally,
I think.

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Jocelyn Bell's discovery
fundamentally changed

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science's understanding
of the universe.

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All of a sudden, people went
from thinking about the universe

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been relatively dull and boring,

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to suddenly the universe is full

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of these things flickering and
flashing around.

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It was really amazing
and very exciting.

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'The girl who started all the fuss
about the pulsars, Jocelyn Bell,

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'was a research student
at Cambridge.'

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Pulsars provided the first evidence

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that Einstein's theory of
gravity was right,

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and resulted in the
winning of a Nobel Prize.

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But according to their finder,

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their discovery tells us about
the nature of science itself.

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Science always doesn't go forwards.

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It's a bit like doing a Rubik's Cube.

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You sometimes have to make more
of a mess with a Rubik's Cube

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before you can get it to go right.

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You build up this picture
of what there is.

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You believe it to be true and you
work with a picture and refine it.

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But sometimes you have
to abandon the picture.

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Sometimes you discover that
the picture you thought you had,

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that everybody thought we had,
actually turns out to be wrong.

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Way back in the Middle Ages,

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they thought that planets went round
the Sun in circles, perfect circles.

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They had to be perfect,
they were heavenly bodies.

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And then they got better telescopes,
better data and they recognised that

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the planets weren't where
they expected them to be.

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They weren't in the right place.

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But they were reluctant
to relinquish the circles

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so they invented epicycles, little
circles on the rim of the big circle.

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Like a roundabout of roundabouts.

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And they could explain
what they observed like that.

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Then they got better telescopes and
better data and found that they had

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to add more epicycles and it got
messier and messier and messier.

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And then one of the key astronomers
of the time, Johannes Kepler,

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said maybe it's not
circles, or circles plus epicycles,

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or circles plus epicycles
with epicycles on them,

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maybe it's slightly
squashed circles, ellipses.

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And that cleared the air wonderfully,

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and suddenly it was
clear and simple again.

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Constant questioning of assumptions

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and probing of ideas has defined
Professor Bell Burnell's career.

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It is this philosophy that
resulted in her becoming one

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of the world's leading scientists.

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An astrophysicist
who believes her discipline

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reveals the essence of who we are.

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The kind of chemical elements that
you find inside the human body,

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hydrogen and oxygen in the water,

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carbon in our tissue and calcium in
our bones, iron in our bloodstream,

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they've come from the Earth as that's
where the plants got them from.

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The Earth and the Sun, because
they formed at much the same time,

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got these chemical elements
from previous exploding stars.

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The material goes through a stellar
cycle, explodes, gets incorporated

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in the Sun and the Earth
and into us.

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When we die, those atoms will
get returned to the Earth.

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We are intimately and ultimately
children of the stars.

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We're made of star stuff.

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So when we look at the night sky,
we're seeing the kind of environment

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that we came from, that the atoms
of which we're made came from.

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The roots of our being, if you like.

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And that's why I find astronomy
so important and so fascinating.

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Jocelyn, how did you first
become interested in the stars?

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I've been interested as
long as I can remember, Sue.

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Dad had a subscription to the
Linen Hall Library in Belfast

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and brought home all sorts of books.

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But the ones that really
caught my attention

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were two
or three books about astronomy.

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Fred Hoyle's Frontiers Of Astronomy
and a book by Dennis Sciama.

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Astronomical distances have
the air of a conjuring trick.

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The vastness of cosmic dimensions
fills us with astonishment.

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Yet like a conjuring trick,

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it all looks very obvious
when we see how it's done.

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It was reading those books that made
me realise

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what an exciting and
interesting subject astronomy was.

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I find it fascinating that
with a limited number

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of snapshots or observations
of the sky, we can deduce so much.

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Not just the evolution of stars
and galaxies, but actually

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the evolution of the whole universe.

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How it began, and how it'll end.

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Nowhere else in science can
you get this big picture.

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It's unique to astronomy.

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Today, a new moon is in the sky.

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A 23-inch metal sphere placed in
orbit by a Russian rocket.

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The launch of the Sputnik satellite

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was a real shock in Britain,
and in the USA,

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because both Britain and the US

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believed they were in
advance of the Soviets technically,

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and then the Soviets go and launch
a satellite, which we couldn't do.

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You are hearing the actual signals

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transmitted by the Earth-circling
satellite. One of the great

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scientific feats of the age.

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So clearly there was some hard
thought and head-scratching,

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and as a consequence, there was
suddenly a great emphasis on science.

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Science was very well-regarded and
any kids who could do science

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were encouraged to go and do science.

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And I was part of that movement.

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My father would get us up to see
Sputniks go by and he'd explain

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to us the difference between a
satellite and, say, a shooting star.

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We named one of our cats after one
of the satellites, in fact, Vostok.

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So it was very much
embedded in the family.

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With the space race, science
had acquired an air of glamour,

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inspiring a new
generation of scientists.

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I went away to boarding school
at age 13.

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The physics teacher that I had,
Mr Tillett, was a super teacher.

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One of the things I remember
him teaching us is that

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once you got a grip on physics,

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you only need to learn relatively few
facts and then you can build on that.

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You can develop a long, long way

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from relatively few bits of
information in the first place.

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And that economy appealed to me.

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I could well have had a
physics teacher who took the view

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that girls couldn't do physics,
what's-the-point-of-trying?

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I'm not sure where I'd have gone
then, what I'd have done,

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but Mr Tillett was quite
the opposite.

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But at university, Bell encountered
a less enlightened attitude.

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I went to Glasgow, and I was
the only woman doing physics.

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Every time I entered the lecture
theatre, as was the tradition,

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the guys whistled, stamped,
cat-called, banged their desks.

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And I had to learn not to blush

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because if you blush,
they do it more noisily.

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It also had an isolating effect,
there was a them and me.

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I was rather on my own
the whole time.

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Since then, Professor Bell Burnell

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has campaigned to
encourage women into science.

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Not for the benefit of women,
but for the benefit of science.

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One of the things women bring to
a research project,

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or indeed any project,
is they come from a different place.

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They've got a different background.

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Science has been named,

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developed, interpreted,

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by white males for decades.

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Women view the conventional wisdom
from a slightly different angle,

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and that sometimes
means they can clearly point to flaws

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in the logic, gaps in the argument.

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They can give a different perspective
of what science is.

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For centuries, man has used his eyes
to look at the stars.

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But now he's found a new method
of observing the universe.

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The early '60s were very
exciting times in astronomy,

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particularly radio astronomy.

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Radio astronomy was perhaps 10,
15 years old, coming into its prime,

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discovering things right,
left and centre. It was all going on.

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It was fantastic.

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Cambridge University, where
Jocelyn Bell had started her PhD,

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was leading the world
in modern radio astronomy.

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It's almost as if astronomers
and indeed physicists were

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in the position of Columbus at the
time he discovered a new continent.

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This is the way we feel
at the present time.

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There were a lot of big names around.

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Stephen Hawking and Dennis Sciama
and Fred Hoyle, and so on.

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So there were a lot of very, very
brilliant people there.

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Jocelyn Bell had found
her spiritual home.

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It was here that
glamorous Russian satellites,

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Mr Tillett's inspirational teaching

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and Glasgow University's trial by
ordeal would start to bear fruit.

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This is the Mullard
Radio Astronomy Observatory.

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A branch of the Cavendish
Laboratory of Cambridge University.

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And here we can see Dr Tony Hewish
who will tell us more about it.

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We were looking far beyond
optical telescopes.

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I mean, you felt very
privileged, actually.

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It was like opening a new
window onto the universe and you

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were the first people to have a look
out through and see what was there.

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And to realise that you were probing
back in time.

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Distance and time go together the
further off you can see something,

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the earlier in the history of the
universe it actually happens to be.

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Here we were looking back over the
history of the universe, in a sense.

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Discovering things that
you could only discover that way.

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One of the pioneers of radio
astronomy is Martin Ryle.

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With optical telescopes,
one is limited to a range

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of observation about here.

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With radio telescopes, one
can however detect galaxies

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at greater distances and with a new
large radio telescope at Cambridge,

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we think we're
being able to detect galaxies

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right out to this region here.

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The Cambridge Radio Astronomy Group
had an interest in distant objects

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because they were interested
in general in how the universe

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had evolved and therefore you want
to try to see things

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at early stages of the universe.

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It was just so exciting,
so stimulating.

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The big question was - did the
universe have a finite origin

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in time, did it suddenly start,
or was there no beginning?

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Because one of the nice theories,

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Fred Hoyle and others, the
so-called steady state cosmology,

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was that overall, the population of
the universe with regard to stars

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and galaxies was roughly constant

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and that's why it was called
the steady state universe.

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Well, it turned out
to be quite untrue.

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Now, the observations we were
making over the past two years,

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seemed to show quite conclusively

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that the steady state theory of
the universe can't be correct.

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The results imply that the
universe is changing with time.

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One was looking back at an
earlier phase of the universe

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and you can look back and say, well,
was the universe the same

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as the present day universe we see
above us now?

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And the answer to that was no.

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The universe is evolving and that
immediately rules out

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the steady state
and points in favour

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of a sudden creation.

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Each time you do research in science,
you're tackling a question or two

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and you find that you've
got some more questions

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uncovered by your research.

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So it's like having circles
and each time you reached the rim

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of the circle, you realise there's
more questions and another circle

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outside it, and you go to the rim
of that circle,

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and you realise there's more
outside it.

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00:15:50,360 --> 00:15:54,200
But you're hooked,
and you just keep going.

240
00:15:54,200 --> 00:15:56,840
As long as the funding, as
long as life will allow you,

241
00:15:56,840 --> 00:16:01,080
you just keep pursuing question
after question after question.

242
00:16:02,800 --> 00:16:07,320
Radio astronomy was prompting
a wholesale re-evaluation

243
00:16:07,320 --> 00:16:11,440
of what was held to be true
about the nature of the universe.

244
00:16:11,440 --> 00:16:14,360
A perfect field of study
for a young scientist

245
00:16:14,360 --> 00:16:16,760
with a passion for the unknown.

246
00:16:16,760 --> 00:16:20,600
I was given almost
complete choice of PhD topic.

247
00:16:20,600 --> 00:16:24,680
They ruled out one
as being not suitable for a woman,

248
00:16:24,680 --> 00:16:28,640
because it involved a lot
of heavy manual labour.

249
00:16:28,640 --> 00:16:32,160
But I was given free range
of the rest,

250
00:16:32,160 --> 00:16:34,480
and Tony Hewish had this project

251
00:16:34,480 --> 00:16:36,040
to identify quasars.

252
00:16:38,120 --> 00:16:41,560
We discovered in 1964 that quasars,

253
00:16:41,560 --> 00:16:46,200
particularly energetic radio
galaxies that have compact nuclei,

254
00:16:46,200 --> 00:16:52,060
twinkled in a way that
ordinary radio galaxies did not.

255
00:16:52,060 --> 00:16:56,420
So here was a way
immediately to sort out

256
00:16:56,420 --> 00:17:01,340
which radio galaxies in your survey
were the interesting ones.

257
00:17:01,340 --> 00:17:04,060
The project was to find more quasars

258
00:17:04,060 --> 00:17:07,900
and to try and understand better
what they were.

259
00:17:07,900 --> 00:17:11,580
But first, we had to build the
radio telescope and actually,

260
00:17:11,580 --> 00:17:15,660
I spent two of my three years
constructing a radio telescope.

261
00:17:15,660 --> 00:17:17,460
Professor Ryle, I think

262
00:17:17,460 --> 00:17:22,500
this will contradict most people's
idea of a radio telescope.

263
00:17:22,500 --> 00:17:24,620
I think the popular
image is one of a big dish.

264
00:17:24,620 --> 00:17:26,220
Yes. Well, for some problems

265
00:17:26,220 --> 00:17:30,020
the big dish is the best solution,
but for this particular problem

266
00:17:30,020 --> 00:17:33,300
of detecting the extremely faint
radio sources, we have something

267
00:17:33,300 --> 00:17:35,340
which we think is better.

268
00:17:39,100 --> 00:17:44,700
The telescope
covered four and a half acres.

269
00:17:44,700 --> 00:17:50,340
To put that in some sort of context,
that's 57 tennis courts, and it had

270
00:17:50,340 --> 00:17:56,060
120 miles of wire and cable in it and
I was responsible for most of that.

271
00:17:56,060 --> 00:18:01,060
And certainly by the end of my PhD,
I could swing a sledgehammer.

272
00:18:06,780 --> 00:18:10,780
I was there at the same time and
I do remember Jocelyn wrapped up

273
00:18:10,780 --> 00:18:13,900
in a great woolly
thick jacket trying to keep warm

274
00:18:13,900 --> 00:18:17,660
as they built this enormous structure
in the fields of Cambridgeshire.

275
00:18:22,140 --> 00:18:25,140
We were scanning the sky
at intervals,

276
00:18:25,140 --> 00:18:29,460
and we didn't have much
in the way of computing.

277
00:18:29,460 --> 00:18:33,220
This was all done with
paper charts and pen recorders

278
00:18:33,220 --> 00:18:39,540
and so the chart recorders rolled
and the pen records came out

279
00:18:39,540 --> 00:18:44,780
and Jocelyn spend a lot of time
poring over these records

280
00:18:44,780 --> 00:18:48,060
and simply logging every twinkling
galaxy

281
00:18:48,060 --> 00:18:51,700
that was detectable on the paper.

282
00:18:55,700 --> 00:19:01,260
My system produced
96 feet of paper chart every day.

283
00:19:01,260 --> 00:19:03,180
Great rolls of the stuff.

284
00:19:04,900 --> 00:19:08,980
And then I'd take the paper
charts from the observatory

285
00:19:08,980 --> 00:19:11,340
from the telescope to Cambridge

286
00:19:11,340 --> 00:19:15,900
to the Cavendish Laboratory, and us
grad students were in an attic.

287
00:19:15,900 --> 00:19:20,260
When Jocelyn would come
in with the rolls of paper,

288
00:19:20,260 --> 00:19:22,060
she would stand at one end of the
attic, make sure that everybody

289
00:19:22,060 --> 00:19:24,420
cleared their rubbish
out down the middle

290
00:19:24,420 --> 00:19:27,260
and she'd ball the paper rolls from
one end to the other and get down

291
00:19:27,260 --> 00:19:29,300
and start to examine them.

292
00:19:32,100 --> 00:19:36,780
I had to scan through these
charts inch by inch by inch,

293
00:19:36,780 --> 00:19:39,940
looking for twinkling quasars.

294
00:19:39,940 --> 00:19:43,700
I also had to identify interference,

295
00:19:43,700 --> 00:19:47,700
and we had trouble with
pirate radio stations.

296
00:19:47,700 --> 00:19:50,620
They were just sort of blasting
everything out of existence

297
00:19:50,620 --> 00:19:53,660
as far as we were concerned.

298
00:19:53,660 --> 00:19:56,900
RADIO JINGLES PLAY

299
00:20:01,380 --> 00:20:07,260
And at one point the Home Office
allocated to the East Anglia Police

300
00:20:07,260 --> 00:20:10,100
our free, clear radio frequency.

301
00:20:10,100 --> 00:20:15,020
So for about a week we picked up the
East Anglia Police and no quasars.

302
00:20:15,020 --> 00:20:18,300
You just couldn't see anything else.

303
00:20:18,300 --> 00:20:21,460
'A1 hold-up, returning to base...'

304
00:20:27,380 --> 00:20:31,860
After I'd been operating
the telescope about a month,

305
00:20:31,860 --> 00:20:36,300
I got first sight of a bit of
signal that didn't look

306
00:20:36,300 --> 00:20:38,620
totally like a scintillating quasar,

307
00:20:40,180 --> 00:20:43,420
and yet didn't look
like interference.

308
00:20:43,420 --> 00:20:47,140
It only occupied about a quarter inch
in the 400ft

309
00:20:47,140 --> 00:20:51,660
of chart paper that it
took to do a complete Sky Survey.

310
00:20:53,180 --> 00:20:55,380
So I could easily have overlooked it,

311
00:20:55,380 --> 00:20:59,260
but a few weeks later, analysing
another piece of chart from another

312
00:20:59,260 --> 00:21:03,100
survey of the sky,
I noticed it again.

313
00:21:03,100 --> 00:21:06,060
I got out all my previous records

314
00:21:06,060 --> 00:21:11,900
from that part of the sky and found
that on occasion, this curious

315
00:21:11,900 --> 00:21:13,580
quarter inch of signal was there.

316
00:21:13,580 --> 00:21:17,540
One key point was it had a fixed
spot amongst the constellations,

317
00:21:17,540 --> 00:21:22,060
so it looked a bit as if it was
out there amongst the stars.

318
00:21:22,060 --> 00:21:25,860
I decided to go and talk to
Tony, my supervisor, about this.

319
00:21:28,540 --> 00:21:33,580
'I didn't believe that it was
necessarily a true recording

320
00:21:33,580 --> 00:21:35,220
'at that stage.'

321
00:21:35,220 --> 00:21:37,540
I mean, we've heard ships
being navigated up the Thames

322
00:21:37,540 --> 00:21:41,100
and all sorts of things. You know,
we're in a band, a VHF band,

323
00:21:41,100 --> 00:21:43,820
which is being used
by all sorts of other people.

324
00:21:45,820 --> 00:21:50,060
Jocelyn said, "It does
appear at the same sidereal time."

325
00:21:50,060 --> 00:21:54,660
That's to say it's located
like a galaxy would be,

326
00:21:54,660 --> 00:21:57,660
but it wasn't always there.

327
00:21:57,660 --> 00:22:00,780
I mean, we were making sky
surveys regularly and sometimes

328
00:22:00,780 --> 00:22:03,020
when the telescope is
directed in that direction

329
00:22:03,020 --> 00:22:07,300
there's just nothing to be seen.
But one thing was quite clear.

330
00:22:09,180 --> 00:22:12,380
As I was running the system for
the survey, this signal took up

331
00:22:12,380 --> 00:22:16,260
this quarter inch and everything
was jammed into the quarter inch

332
00:22:16,260 --> 00:22:19,300
and what we needed to
do was spread it out.

333
00:22:19,300 --> 00:22:21,140
When you're using a chart recorder

334
00:22:21,140 --> 00:22:26,020
the way you spread things out is you
from the paper faster under the pen.

335
00:22:26,020 --> 00:22:29,860
You make an enlargement, basically.

336
00:22:29,860 --> 00:22:35,660
So all we had to do was
run the chart paper faster,

337
00:22:35,660 --> 00:22:39,220
and I did this faithfully
for the month of November

338
00:22:39,220 --> 00:22:41,700
and the object wasn't showing.

339
00:22:41,700 --> 00:22:45,740
For this whole month,
it appeared to have disappeared.

340
00:22:47,580 --> 00:22:51,020
Tony was quite cross.

341
00:22:51,020 --> 00:22:54,220
Grad students are a bit like the
cat - they're there for kicking.

342
00:22:54,220 --> 00:22:55,900
"Oh, it's a flair star.

343
00:22:55,900 --> 00:22:59,940
"It's have been and gone and
done it and you've missed it!"

344
00:22:59,940 --> 00:23:04,580
But I persisted in going out to the
observatory to set up the observation

345
00:23:04,580 --> 00:23:09,100
and the high-speed recording,
and held my breath and waited.

346
00:23:14,380 --> 00:23:19,100
Then one day late in November,
I actually got it.

347
00:23:27,380 --> 00:23:32,220
And as the paper flowed under the
pen, the pen went blip, blip,

348
00:23:32,220 --> 00:23:33,380
blip, blip.

349
00:23:33,380 --> 00:23:37,100
It looked like a series
of equally spaced pulses

350
00:23:37,100 --> 00:23:41,620
and once I was able to get the paper
off the recorder,

351
00:23:41,620 --> 00:23:45,860
I could see it was
a series of equally spaced pulses.

352
00:23:45,860 --> 00:23:48,940
That was totally surprising.

353
00:23:48,940 --> 00:23:51,580
I don't know what I had expected,

354
00:23:51,580 --> 00:23:54,700
but I certainly didn't expect
regular pulsations.

355
00:23:54,700 --> 00:23:58,220
Stars and galaxies
don't pulse like that.

356
00:23:58,220 --> 00:24:01,860
And that was the afternoon that
I phoned Tony Hewish and said,

357
00:24:03,500 --> 00:24:06,140
"Hey, Tony, this curious signal
is a string of pulses."

358
00:24:08,700 --> 00:24:11,220
So I said, "Well, don't be stupid.

359
00:24:11,220 --> 00:24:13,140
"It has to be radio interference."

360
00:24:13,140 --> 00:24:17,300
The fact that it was pulsing
regularly, I mean,

361
00:24:17,300 --> 00:24:21,380
was just nonsense. True astronomical
sources don't do that.

362
00:24:23,620 --> 00:24:25,220
I didn't argue with him.

363
00:24:25,220 --> 00:24:27,660
I wasn't sure I agreed with him.

364
00:24:29,140 --> 00:24:32,380
I knew somehow in my bones

365
00:24:32,380 --> 00:24:35,620
that it wasn't that simple.

366
00:24:35,620 --> 00:24:40,100
I learned something very
useful from my time in Glasgow.

367
00:24:40,100 --> 00:24:45,900
The physics students had a Physics
Society and we got visiting speakers,

368
00:24:45,900 --> 00:24:49,180
and quite a few of the staff
would attend these meetings,

369
00:24:49,180 --> 00:24:52,660
listening to the speakers. And I was
the only female in the class

370
00:24:52,660 --> 00:24:56,700
and the guys all asked bright
questions to the visiting speaker,

371
00:24:56,700 --> 00:25:01,980
and I thought, if I keep quiet,
I'm going to disappear from sight.

372
00:25:01,980 --> 00:25:05,220
I have got to learn to ask questions.

373
00:25:05,220 --> 00:25:08,500
I was quite shy at the time,
so it was actually difficult.

374
00:25:08,500 --> 00:25:13,260
But I lit upon a ploy, which
I'm actually quite proud of.

375
00:25:13,260 --> 00:25:17,620
I realised that a speaker in
the first five minutes sets out

376
00:25:17,620 --> 00:25:19,860
the rudiments of their stall

377
00:25:19,860 --> 00:25:26,500
and may or may not make clear
what assumptions they've made.

378
00:25:26,500 --> 00:25:29,740
And they then go on to build on this.

379
00:25:29,740 --> 00:25:33,260
If I listened like
fury for the first five minutes

380
00:25:33,260 --> 00:25:37,460
and tried to spot what
assumptions they had made,

381
00:25:37,460 --> 00:25:40,860
you can then ask a
devastating question at the end.

382
00:25:40,860 --> 00:25:44,260
"You've assumed, sir, such
and such and such and such.

383
00:25:44,260 --> 00:25:47,940
"If that's not true, how much
does it affect your conclusions?"

384
00:25:47,940 --> 00:25:51,140
And the rest of the audience goes,
ah!

385
00:25:51,140 --> 00:25:54,460
And it works, every time.

386
00:25:54,460 --> 00:25:57,460
And that was the ploy
I adopted as an undergraduate

387
00:25:57,460 --> 00:26:04,380
as a survival technique. Sometimes
in research you can know too much,

388
00:26:04,380 --> 00:26:07,820
and it's the youngster who's
ignorant or somebody coming in from

389
00:26:07,820 --> 00:26:11,300
outside that says, "You know,
the Emperor has no clothes on",

390
00:26:11,300 --> 00:26:14,100
that, actually, is telling the truth.

391
00:26:14,100 --> 00:26:15,660
Can see the truth.

392
00:26:18,100 --> 00:26:22,460
When I phoned Tony that first
afternoon to say, "Hey, Tony,

393
00:26:22,460 --> 00:26:24,500
"you know that funny new source?

394
00:26:24,500 --> 00:26:28,220
"It's pulsing with a period
of one and a third seconds."

395
00:26:28,220 --> 00:26:34,220
Tony knew more astrophysics than
I did, and he knew that it meant

396
00:26:34,220 --> 00:26:37,180
that that object was very,
very small, star-sized.

397
00:26:37,180 --> 00:26:42,460
Until then, radio astronomers hadn't
seen strong signals from stars.

398
00:26:42,460 --> 00:26:47,220
They didn't believe stars were radio
sources, so there was a problem.

399
00:26:47,220 --> 00:26:50,260
I knew less astrophysics.

400
00:26:50,260 --> 00:26:54,700
I wasn't bothered about the object's
size. I thought, "interesting".

401
00:26:54,700 --> 00:26:58,180
There was no denying the existence
of the mysterious pulses,

402
00:26:58,180 --> 00:27:03,620
but were they real or simply
an experimental artefact?

403
00:27:03,620 --> 00:27:05,380
A fault in her telescope?

404
00:27:05,380 --> 00:27:09,780
One of the first things we wanted
to do was see

405
00:27:09,780 --> 00:27:13,260
whether it was some fluke
of my equipment,

406
00:27:13,260 --> 00:27:16,380
and I was afraid that literally
I had got some wires crossed

407
00:27:16,380 --> 00:27:18,180
or done something stupid like that.

408
00:27:18,180 --> 00:27:23,180
And so we enlisted the help of Robin
Collins and his supervisor Paul Scott

409
00:27:23,180 --> 00:27:27,020
to see if their radio telescope
could pick up this pulsing signal.

410
00:27:27,020 --> 00:27:29,380
The way the telescopes were aligned,

411
00:27:29,380 --> 00:27:34,340
my telescope looked at that bit
of sky shortly before theirs did.

412
00:27:34,340 --> 00:27:35,980
20 minutes or something.

413
00:27:35,980 --> 00:27:39,940
We could see it pulsing nicely
with my telescope

414
00:27:39,940 --> 00:27:43,300
and then we went and stood
by Robin's pen recorder.

415
00:27:49,300 --> 00:27:52,700
And we stood by this pen recorder,

416
00:27:52,700 --> 00:27:56,100
and waited and waited and waited...

417
00:27:58,700 --> 00:28:00,820
and nothing happened.

418
00:28:00,820 --> 00:28:03,580
Oh, my God.

419
00:28:07,860 --> 00:28:11,740
Tony and Paul,
the two academic staff,

420
00:28:11,740 --> 00:28:15,580
started walking down this very long
laboratory and I was padding along

421
00:28:15,580 --> 00:28:20,020
behind them trying to keep up with
them, in every sense of the word.

422
00:28:20,020 --> 00:28:22,740
Robin stayed by the pen recorder

423
00:28:22,740 --> 00:28:27,140
and we'd just got down the
end of this long laboratory,

424
00:28:27,140 --> 00:28:30,380
and there was a strangled cry from
Robin, "Here it is!"

425
00:28:30,380 --> 00:28:32,620
and we came charging back up the lab

426
00:28:32,620 --> 00:28:35,820
and there it was - pulse,
pulse, pulse, pulse, pulse, pulse.

427
00:28:45,220 --> 00:28:49,700
We had actually miscalculated when
it would appear in Robin's telescope

428
00:28:49,700 --> 00:28:54,180
and we had been out
by five minutes, or so.

429
00:28:54,180 --> 00:28:58,220
Fortunately, only five minutes. If
we'd been out by a longer interval,

430
00:28:58,220 --> 00:29:01,460
we might have given up and
gone home and the story

431
00:29:01,460 --> 00:29:03,220
would've been very, very different.

432
00:29:05,340 --> 00:29:08,100
I'm waiting for an intelligible
message from space and here is one!

433
00:29:08,100 --> 00:29:09,100
Is it intelligible? Yes!

434
00:29:09,100 --> 00:29:12,340
You can decipher it? Oh, do you
think the cosmos is inhabited

435
00:29:12,340 --> 00:29:15,020
by a load of boy scouts sending
Morse code?

436
00:29:15,020 --> 00:29:18,140
What is this, Dennis? Is it a
message? Have a look. Let me see.

437
00:29:18,140 --> 00:29:20,700
Could be from a distant probe.

438
00:29:20,700 --> 00:29:22,940
Or another planet.

439
00:29:26,180 --> 00:29:28,900
Yes.

440
00:29:28,900 --> 00:29:32,100
I remember talking to a very
learned friend, Sir Edward Bullard,

441
00:29:32,100 --> 00:29:33,340
a famous geophysicist.

442
00:29:33,340 --> 00:29:37,340
I said "Look, we're getting this
very strange signal, seems to have

443
00:29:37,340 --> 00:29:41,700
"fixed co-ordinates in the sky, but
it's a series of regular pulses".

444
00:29:41,700 --> 00:29:44,140
And of course the question mark

445
00:29:44,140 --> 00:29:48,820
was in our minds too, could it be
intelligence or something?

446
00:29:48,820 --> 00:29:51,340
He said, "Simplest
explanation -

447
00:29:51,340 --> 00:29:54,900
"look and see
if it's a single frequency

448
00:29:54,900 --> 00:29:58,540
"and then it's probably 99%
an intelligent signal".

449
00:29:58,540 --> 00:30:00,540
You know,

450
00:30:00,540 --> 00:30:02,780
radio signals naturally emitted

451
00:30:02,780 --> 00:30:07,300
cover a whole broad range
of radio frequencies.

452
00:30:07,300 --> 00:30:13,180
But it's intelligent things
that radiate on a single frequency.

453
00:30:13,180 --> 00:30:17,660
And that's what it turned out to
be...and the intelligent signal

454
00:30:17,660 --> 00:30:23,140
became more real. Things were all
getting rather tense at that stage.

455
00:30:27,300 --> 00:30:30,940
I went down to Tony's office
late one evening to ask him

456
00:30:30,940 --> 00:30:34,860
about something, and rather
unusually, the door was shut.

457
00:30:34,860 --> 00:30:38,580
Tony normally had
an open door policy.

458
00:30:38,580 --> 00:30:42,220
So I knocked, and a voice said,
"Come in", and I poked my head

459
00:30:42,220 --> 00:30:47,460
round the door, and Tony said "Ah,
Jocelyn, come in and shut the door."

460
00:30:47,460 --> 00:30:50,460
And there was a high-level
meeting going on in there.

461
00:30:50,460 --> 00:30:54,820
There was Tony, there was Martin
Ryle, the Professor, the head

462
00:30:54,820 --> 00:30:58,700
of the group, and one other senior
person and it was a discussion

463
00:30:58,700 --> 00:31:02,660
that I think I should have been
in on, actually, from the beginning.

464
00:31:05,580 --> 00:31:09,260
We thought this was bigger than
we want to handle ourselves.

465
00:31:09,260 --> 00:31:12,780
We don't want to just give it to the
press, this has to be done properly.

466
00:31:12,780 --> 00:31:16,980
And I discussed this with Martin Ryle
because I was wondering what to do...

467
00:31:16,980 --> 00:31:23,260
and he was half joking,
but he said, "Burn the records,
and forget about it".

468
00:31:23,260 --> 00:31:28,180
Because he said,
"If the news gets out

469
00:31:28,180 --> 00:31:30,060
"that there's intelligence...

470
00:31:30,060 --> 00:31:35,540
"out there, what is going to happen"?
People will want to launch

471
00:31:35,540 --> 00:31:39,700
a signal in that direction,
to talk to them or something,

472
00:31:39,700 --> 00:31:44,580
and he said, "Supposing all they're
doing on that distant planet

473
00:31:44,580 --> 00:31:47,620
"is looking for a reply somewhere,

474
00:31:47,620 --> 00:31:49,380
"so if they, they're overcrowded,

475
00:31:49,380 --> 00:31:53,540
"they're looking for a nice, young,
green planet that they can occupy,

476
00:31:53,540 --> 00:31:59,020
"that's what it's all about, and the
next thing is, you'll be invaded".

477
00:32:04,460 --> 00:32:06,580
We didn't solve it that evening

478
00:32:06,580 --> 00:32:12,300
and I went home to get supper, and
I was really getting pretty cross.

479
00:32:12,300 --> 00:32:16,660
My money was running out, I wanted
to get a thesis done, get my PhD

480
00:32:16,660 --> 00:32:21,020
and there was some silly lot of
little green men choosing

481
00:32:21,020 --> 00:32:23,380
my radio telescope and my frequency

482
00:32:23,380 --> 00:32:26,220
to signal to earth, you know,
how dare they, kind of thing.

483
00:32:27,860 --> 00:32:31,140
I got some supper and felt
I had to come back to work.

484
00:32:31,140 --> 00:32:35,580
With all the special observations on
the pulsars, the twinkling quasars

485
00:32:35,580 --> 00:32:40,500
had been rather neglected and there
was a huge backlog of these

486
00:32:40,500 --> 00:32:42,700
survey charts to be analysed...

487
00:32:42,700 --> 00:32:47,780
and at about quarter to ten
at night I was analysing a chart

488
00:32:47,780 --> 00:32:51,820
from another piece of sky
and thought I saw a piece

489
00:32:51,820 --> 00:32:54,460
of this scruffy kind of signal.

490
00:32:54,460 --> 00:32:57,860
Looked exactly like what I
was seeing before, but from

491
00:32:57,860 --> 00:33:00,620
a totally different bit of the sky.

492
00:33:00,620 --> 00:33:04,620
Right. I thought,
I'm not going to bed tonight,

493
00:33:04,620 --> 00:33:07,540
I'm going out to the observatory.

494
00:33:15,780 --> 00:33:19,180
That bit of the sky was due to
go through the telescope beam

495
00:33:19,180 --> 00:33:21,460
at 2.00, 3.00 in the morning...

496
00:33:21,460 --> 00:33:25,140
December 21st, perishing cold.

497
00:33:33,660 --> 00:33:38,100
And I switched on the high-speed
recorder and it came,

498
00:33:38,100 --> 00:33:41,780
blip, blip, blip, blip.
Clearly the same family.

499
00:33:41,780 --> 00:33:43,860
The same sort of stuff.

500
00:33:43,860 --> 00:33:48,420
And that was great.
That was really sweet.

501
00:33:48,420 --> 00:33:51,300
It finally scotched
the little green men hypothesis,

502
00:33:51,300 --> 00:33:55,380
as it's highly unlikely there's
two lots of little green men,

503
00:33:55,380 --> 00:33:57,660
opposite sides of the universe,

504
00:33:57,660 --> 00:34:02,300
both deciding to signal to a rather
inconspicuous Planet Earth

505
00:34:02,300 --> 00:34:08,580
at the same time, using a daft
technique and commonplace frequency.

506
00:34:12,060 --> 00:34:17,100
It has to be some new kind of star
not seen before.

507
00:34:18,580 --> 00:34:22,620
And that then cleared the way
for us publishing, going public.

508
00:34:25,580 --> 00:34:28,980
Martin Ryle called up the
editor of Nature, John Maddox,

509
00:34:28,980 --> 00:34:32,780
and more or less said, "We've got
something interesting coming".

510
00:34:32,780 --> 00:34:36,020
He didn't quite say "hold the
presses" but he nearly did.

511
00:34:36,020 --> 00:34:41,100
Now the people here say that if they
got three signals as exactly spaced

512
00:34:41,100 --> 00:34:43,940
as that, it would be very unusual.

513
00:34:43,940 --> 00:34:46,820
If they got four,
it would be phenomenal.

514
00:34:46,820 --> 00:34:49,620
Well, they've had
pulses as exactly spaced as that,

515
00:34:49,620 --> 00:34:52,260
24 hours of the day since November.

516
00:34:55,740 --> 00:34:59,580
Well, these signals that we're
picking up are entirely new.

517
00:34:59,580 --> 00:35:04,060
Nothing like this has been
seen in radio astronomy before.

518
00:35:04,060 --> 00:35:08,740
The excitement was because
this was a totally unexpected,

519
00:35:08,740 --> 00:35:10,980
totally new kind of object behaving

520
00:35:10,980 --> 00:35:15,420
in a way that astronomers had
never expected, never dreamed of.

521
00:35:17,660 --> 00:35:20,940
Here is a discovery which
illustrates the Universe

522
00:35:20,940 --> 00:35:24,580
is far more complex
than we at present believe.

523
00:35:24,580 --> 00:35:28,660
That month,
that was a real high point...

524
00:35:28,660 --> 00:35:31,140
and when I wrote that Nature letter,

525
00:35:31,140 --> 00:35:35,460
I thought, my God, that's pretty
good actually. Ha, ha, ha!

526
00:35:35,460 --> 00:35:38,100
There's a lot in there. Yeah.

527
00:35:43,380 --> 00:35:47,460
Seeing the article in
print was tremendous.

528
00:35:47,460 --> 00:35:52,180
And I remember sending a copy of
the paper to my physics teacher.

529
00:35:54,620 --> 00:35:57,860
And that's your physics teacher
at the Mount? At the Mount, yes.

530
00:35:57,860 --> 00:35:59,500
My physics teacher at the Mount.

531
00:35:59,500 --> 00:36:05,580
And how did he react to it? He
had actually alerted the school.

532
00:36:09,060 --> 00:36:10,900
There was a lot of publicity,

533
00:36:10,900 --> 00:36:14,140
Mr Tillett had seen this
and told the school.

534
00:36:16,580 --> 00:36:21,660
There aren't so many people that
take up physics as a profession and

535
00:36:21,660 --> 00:36:27,140
certainly relatively few women of my
generation, so Mr Tillett followed

536
00:36:27,140 --> 00:36:29,580
with some interest my career.

537
00:36:29,580 --> 00:36:32,980
And I was really pleased
that he was still around

538
00:36:32,980 --> 00:36:35,260
at the time of the discovery.

539
00:36:39,860 --> 00:36:44,580
The family was just...amazed.

540
00:36:44,580 --> 00:36:47,660
Absolutely.

541
00:36:47,660 --> 00:36:51,300
And proud? Very proud.

542
00:36:54,780 --> 00:36:58,460
Despite the obvious importance
of Jocelyn Bell's discovery,

543
00:36:58,460 --> 00:37:02,300
the mysterious bursts of
energy still hadn't been named.

544
00:37:02,300 --> 00:37:05,900
We hadn't really thought of a name
for these things, so this journalist

545
00:37:05,900 --> 00:37:10,420
who was from the Daily Telegraph
said, "What about 'pulsar',

546
00:37:10,420 --> 00:37:14,060
"as an abbreviation
for Pulsating Radio Star"?

547
00:37:14,060 --> 00:37:17,620
And he wrote it up on the board in
the office where we were meeting.

548
00:37:17,620 --> 00:37:20,260
And we looked at it and thought,
"Oh yeah, that looks OK".

549
00:37:20,260 --> 00:37:23,100
If only a very few pulsars have
been discovered so far,

550
00:37:23,100 --> 00:37:25,900
and they are all very close
to the sun, comparatively speaking,

551
00:37:25,900 --> 00:37:29,780
does this mean there are vast numbers
of them throughout the galaxy?

552
00:37:29,780 --> 00:37:32,580
Yes, if they're distributed
throughout the galaxy in the way

553
00:37:32,580 --> 00:37:34,900
we find them close to the sun,

554
00:37:34,900 --> 00:37:37,940
there must be millions of them
in our own galaxy.

555
00:37:37,940 --> 00:37:41,860
And of course, the most important
question of all, what are they?

556
00:37:41,860 --> 00:37:44,260
Well, we know that they're
very small, they're objects

557
00:37:44,260 --> 00:37:46,180
about the size of a planet.

558
00:37:46,180 --> 00:37:49,420
We know also that they're
very energetic and that the source

559
00:37:49,420 --> 00:37:52,860
of energy must be far greater
than a planet could really provide.

560
00:37:52,860 --> 00:37:56,820
Something like a star, compressed
into a volume the size of a planet.

561
00:38:02,860 --> 00:38:05,060
To work out what pulsars are,

562
00:38:05,060 --> 00:38:08,900
we had to go back to exploding
stars, the supernovae.

563
00:38:15,340 --> 00:38:20,260
It used to be assumed that a
supernova was a total catastrophic

564
00:38:20,260 --> 00:38:24,660
destruction of the star, with
everything dispersing out into space.

565
00:38:27,580 --> 00:38:29,820
However, in the 1930s, an astronomer,

566
00:38:29,820 --> 00:38:35,380
a Swiss astronomer called Zwicky,
a guy who had a lot of ideas,

567
00:38:35,380 --> 00:38:39,860
a very creative mind, reckoned that
when these supernovae occurred,

568
00:38:39,860 --> 00:38:45,820
the core of the star got shrunk right
down to make this very dense ball,

569
00:38:45,820 --> 00:38:51,340
and it would be rich in neutrons,
so it was called a neutron star.

570
00:38:51,340 --> 00:38:55,220
Neutron stars were
a pretty wild idea,

571
00:38:55,220 --> 00:38:57,220
nobody took them very seriously,

572
00:38:57,220 --> 00:39:01,860
and I don't know that people took
Zwicky very seriously either.

573
00:39:01,860 --> 00:39:06,380
But we now know, following the
discovery of pulsars, that there are

574
00:39:06,380 --> 00:39:11,140
these objects left behind, because it
turns out that the pulsars are indeed

575
00:39:11,140 --> 00:39:13,700
neutron stars, and Zwicky was right.

576
00:39:13,700 --> 00:39:16,620
This is what we believe the
neutron star will look like.

577
00:39:16,620 --> 00:39:21,180
The neutron star is
an incredibly compact thing.

578
00:39:21,180 --> 00:39:24,780
These lines show you
the direction of the magnetic field

579
00:39:24,780 --> 00:39:26,980
close to the neutron star.

580
00:39:26,980 --> 00:39:31,140
They've a very strong magnetic field,
perhaps a million, million times

581
00:39:31,140 --> 00:39:32,980
the Earth's magnetic field...

582
00:39:35,380 --> 00:39:39,100
And it seems that coming from
the magnetic north and south poles,

583
00:39:39,100 --> 00:39:41,380
there's a beam of radio waves.

584
00:39:41,380 --> 00:39:46,100
And as the star spins,
this beam gets swept round the sky

585
00:39:46,100 --> 00:39:48,100
like a lighthouse beam...

586
00:39:48,100 --> 00:39:52,300
and each time a beam sweeps
across the Earth, we see a pulse.

587
00:39:52,300 --> 00:39:55,940
So if you get a pulsar going
four times a second,

588
00:39:55,940 --> 00:39:58,580
it means it's spinning
four times a second.

589
00:39:58,580 --> 00:40:03,460
If you get a pulsar 600 times a
second, it's spinning 600 times

590
00:40:03,460 --> 00:40:08,780
a second, which beggars imagination,
but that's what seems to be the case.

591
00:40:11,780 --> 00:40:15,620
The faint blips from space
so nearly dismissed as error

592
00:40:15,620 --> 00:40:17,900
took the world by storm.

593
00:40:17,900 --> 00:40:22,180
And any astronomer worth his salt
wanted a piece of the action.

594
00:40:22,180 --> 00:40:26,620
Observing pulsars is like
listening to a Beethoven symphony.

595
00:40:26,620 --> 00:40:29,940
There's the rhythm of the
pulses themselves,

596
00:40:29,940 --> 00:40:33,540
and within the pulses,
a complicated pattern of notes.

597
00:40:33,540 --> 00:40:34,940
Sometimes at one frequency,

598
00:40:34,940 --> 00:40:39,780
sometimes at another, just as in
the melody of a musical composition.

599
00:40:39,780 --> 00:40:43,900
All of a sudden, people went from
thinking about stars

600
00:40:43,900 --> 00:40:48,100
as being unchanging, the Universe
being relatively dull and boring,

601
00:40:48,100 --> 00:40:53,420
to suddenly, the Universe is
full of these things flickering

602
00:40:53,420 --> 00:40:57,820
and flashing around, extremely
energetic, very exciting.

603
00:41:01,980 --> 00:41:05,820
Pulsars were important but they
were an enabling discovery, because

604
00:41:05,820 --> 00:41:09,460
it actually showed that not only
did these ideas exist theoretically,

605
00:41:09,460 --> 00:41:11,780
but they could actually be seen

606
00:41:11,780 --> 00:41:14,740
and it allowed us to tie down
many of the theoretical ideas

607
00:41:14,740 --> 00:41:16,620
that were in vogue at the time.

608
00:41:20,620 --> 00:41:25,540
Stephen Hawking got on to me and said
how delighted he was, congratulations

609
00:41:25,540 --> 00:41:30,060
and so on, and he said,
"Well, if neutron stars exist,

610
00:41:30,060 --> 00:41:32,700
"you must believe strongly
in black holes".

611
00:41:32,700 --> 00:41:35,460
"I mean, a neutron star is so
close to being a black hole,

612
00:41:35,460 --> 00:41:38,740
"that if neutron stars are there
then there's no question

613
00:41:38,740 --> 00:41:40,940
"that black holes are there too".

614
00:41:46,300 --> 00:41:49,100
It's all do with the mass of
the star that's collapsing.

615
00:41:49,100 --> 00:41:50,980
If the star is about the size

616
00:41:50,980 --> 00:41:54,620
of the sun, it's going to form a
white dwarf, where it's held up

617
00:41:54,620 --> 00:41:58,100
by the pressure
of the material inside it.

618
00:41:58,100 --> 00:42:02,420
If the star is more dense, it
actually will form a neutron star,

619
00:42:02,420 --> 00:42:06,780
where the neutrons themselves are
the thing providing basic pressure.

620
00:42:08,900 --> 00:42:13,260
If there's even more mass,
the neutrons themselves

621
00:42:13,260 --> 00:42:15,900
aren't strong enough to hold up

622
00:42:15,900 --> 00:42:20,980
against gravity. The star collapses
further and you get a black hole.

623
00:42:23,780 --> 00:42:26,860
I mean, black holes were a
bit of a joke in those days.

624
00:42:26,860 --> 00:42:29,700
You know, Steven Hawking was making
these outrageous suggestions,

625
00:42:29,700 --> 00:42:33,780
and so on, and people didn't take
black holes at all seriously.

626
00:42:33,780 --> 00:42:35,780
But I think after that, they did.

627
00:42:45,980 --> 00:42:49,980
Like many scientific discoveries,
it took an open-minded researcher

628
00:42:49,980 --> 00:42:53,860
to realise there was something
there to be discovered.

629
00:42:53,860 --> 00:42:57,900
It was a quality which had been
instilled in Jocelyn Bell Burnell

630
00:42:57,900 --> 00:43:03,220
from an early age. I was born into
a Quaker family.

631
00:43:03,220 --> 00:43:08,300
My son, who's done the research,
says I am ninth-generation Quaker.

632
00:43:08,300 --> 00:43:13,820
I've been active in Quakers
all my life, and still am.

633
00:43:18,260 --> 00:43:25,260
I find that Quakerism and research
science fit together very very well.

634
00:43:25,260 --> 00:43:30,260
In Quakerism you're expected to
develop your own understanding of God

635
00:43:30,260 --> 00:43:33,580
from your experience in the world.

636
00:43:33,580 --> 00:43:36,340
There isn't a creed,
there isn't a dogma.

637
00:43:36,340 --> 00:43:42,060
There's an understanding, but nothing
as formal as a dogma or creed.

638
00:43:44,220 --> 00:43:49,380
And this idea that you develop your
own understanding also means that you

639
00:43:49,380 --> 00:43:53,620
keep redeveloping your understanding
as you get more experience.

640
00:43:53,620 --> 00:43:58,700
It seems to me that's very like what
goes on in "the scientific method".

641
00:43:58,700 --> 00:44:02,860
You have a model of a star,
it's an understanding,

642
00:44:02,860 --> 00:44:09,020
and develop that model in the light
of experiments and observations.

643
00:44:09,020 --> 00:44:13,220
And so in both, you're
expected to evolve your thinking.

644
00:44:13,220 --> 00:44:16,300
Nothing is static. Nothing is final.

645
00:44:16,300 --> 00:44:19,180
Everything is held provisionally.

646
00:44:23,060 --> 00:44:25,300
Through history, we have seen some
theories

647
00:44:25,300 --> 00:44:29,940
that have stood the test of time well
and some that disappeared quickly.

648
00:44:29,940 --> 00:44:35,220
A theory that stands the test of
time well will have been prodded

649
00:44:35,220 --> 00:44:41,460
and poked and battered and examined
from every angle and still stands up.

650
00:44:41,460 --> 00:44:45,580
and Einstein's theory of relativity
is one of those that's been subject

651
00:44:45,580 --> 00:44:50,900
to a lot of scrutiny, but it was only
following the discovery

652
00:44:50,900 --> 00:44:56,580
of pulsars that it was possible to
test Einstein's ideas about gravity.

653
00:44:56,580 --> 00:45:00,620
Einstein's theories predict that
where you have a pair of stars

654
00:45:00,620 --> 00:45:05,500
orbiting each other, this system
produces a new kind of radiation,

655
00:45:05,500 --> 00:45:08,300
gravitational radiation,
or gravitational waves,

656
00:45:08,300 --> 00:45:12,980
and the effects of these waves being
produced are that the two stars move

657
00:45:12,980 --> 00:45:17,180
closer together and go round faster,
which sends out more gravity waves,

658
00:45:17,180 --> 00:45:20,740
so they move closer together
and go round even faster,

659
00:45:20,740 --> 00:45:23,180
and they actually end up merging.

660
00:45:23,180 --> 00:45:27,220
With the first pulsar discovered in
one of these binary systems,

661
00:45:27,220 --> 00:45:32,540
they've been able to track the orbit
and they have seen that the stars

662
00:45:32,540 --> 00:45:37,580
do move closer together, in exactly
the manner predicted by Einstein.

663
00:45:41,260 --> 00:45:45,060
So does that mean that
Einstein's been proved right, then?

664
00:45:45,060 --> 00:45:49,380
The current situation is that
the pulsar astronomers have

665
00:45:49,380 --> 00:45:55,660
shown that Einstein's theory of
gravity is right to about 0.02%.

666
00:45:55,660 --> 00:46:01,460
That's not the same as
saying it's true though, is it?

667
00:46:01,460 --> 00:46:07,220
Scientists should never claim that
something is absolutely true.

668
00:46:07,220 --> 00:46:11,380
You should never claim
perfect or total or 100%,

669
00:46:11,380 --> 00:46:14,580
because you never, ever get there.

670
00:46:17,020 --> 00:46:20,340
Is science therefore not
a quest for the truth?

671
00:46:20,340 --> 00:46:23,460
Science is a quest for understanding.

672
00:46:23,460 --> 00:46:27,500
A search for truth seems
to me to be full of pitfalls.

673
00:46:27,500 --> 00:46:29,060
We all have different understandings

674
00:46:29,060 --> 00:46:34,020
of what truth is, and we each believe
or we're in danger of each believing

675
00:46:34,020 --> 00:46:37,660
that our truth is the one and
only absolute truth,

676
00:46:37,660 --> 00:46:40,980
which is why I say
it's full of pitfalls.

677
00:46:40,980 --> 00:46:47,540
I think a search for understanding
is much more serviceable to humankind

678
00:46:47,540 --> 00:46:51,220
and is a sufficiently
ambitious goal of itself.

679
00:46:51,740 --> 00:46:55,780
Jocelyn Bell Burnell
has devoted her life

680
00:46:55,780 --> 00:46:57,820
to the search for understanding.

681
00:46:57,820 --> 00:47:02,500
After completing her PhD, she
settled into the world of academia,

682
00:47:02,500 --> 00:47:06,980
continuing her research
into the behaviour of stars.

683
00:47:06,980 --> 00:47:10,420
I have very vivid memories

684
00:47:10,420 --> 00:47:13,740
of October 10th, 1974.

685
00:47:13,740 --> 00:47:19,980
I was working with a satellite
called Ariel V that was launching

686
00:47:19,980 --> 00:47:23,740
from off the coast of Kenya
on the morning of 10th October.

687
00:47:28,180 --> 00:47:32,380
At about 12.05 that morning, one of
my colleagues came steaming

688
00:47:32,380 --> 00:47:35,180
into the office,
"Have you heard the news?!"

689
00:47:35,180 --> 00:47:39,140
No, John, what news?
Something wrong with Ariel V?

690
00:47:39,140 --> 00:47:41,860
"No, the Nobel Prize."

691
00:47:41,860 --> 00:47:46,540
His wife had been listening at home
to the news and had phoned him up

692
00:47:46,540 --> 00:47:51,180
and told him Martin Ryle and Tony
Hewish had got the Nobel Prize.

693
00:47:51,180 --> 00:47:53,940
And John was along, I think,

694
00:47:53,940 --> 00:47:58,060
hoping to see steam come
out of my ears.

695
00:47:58,060 --> 00:48:02,420
Well, that was just a total,
huge surprise.

696
00:48:05,460 --> 00:48:09,740
I just hadn't the faintest idea it
was going to happen like that,

697
00:48:09,740 --> 00:48:14,180
and to get it with Martin Ryle
was a double pleasure,

698
00:48:14,180 --> 00:48:19,860
because he was a wonderful man, and
the sadness was that he wasn't able

699
00:48:19,860 --> 00:48:22,700
himself to go and collect
the prize.

700
00:48:22,700 --> 00:48:25,180
Professor Antony Hewish.

701
00:48:26,780 --> 00:48:32,100
The discovery of pulsars, for which
you played a decisive role,

702
00:48:32,100 --> 00:48:37,580
is a most outstanding example of how,
in recent years, our knowledge

703
00:48:37,580 --> 00:48:41,220
of the Universe
has been dramatically extended.

704
00:48:41,220 --> 00:48:44,580
It just is a wonderful experience.

705
00:48:44,580 --> 00:48:48,540
TRUMPET FANFARE
APPLAUSE

706
00:49:00,300 --> 00:49:06,180
Other people were annoyed
on my behalf, it has to be said.

707
00:49:06,180 --> 00:49:10,260
And there were puns about "No Bell",

708
00:49:10,260 --> 00:49:15,260
punning on my maiden name,
Bell, the "No Bell Prize".

709
00:49:15,260 --> 00:49:21,860
I was slightly saddened that Jocelyn
Bell has not received an equal...

710
00:49:21,860 --> 00:49:26,740
recognition of her contribution,
which I think was central.

711
00:49:26,740 --> 00:49:30,100
And I think it was, there were many
people who felt it was rather sad,

712
00:49:30,100 --> 00:49:33,820
and that perhaps she should have
been up there with the others.

713
00:49:33,820 --> 00:49:39,100
There was some disappointment
about that at the time.

714
00:49:39,100 --> 00:49:42,580
I mean, my analogy really
is a little bit like...

715
00:49:42,580 --> 00:49:48,820
when you plan a ship
of discovery and you go off...

716
00:49:48,820 --> 00:49:54,020
and somebody up the mast head
says, "Land ho..."

717
00:49:54,020 --> 00:49:57,420
That's great, but I mean,

718
00:49:57,420 --> 00:50:01,660
who actually inspired it,
conceived it and decided

719
00:50:01,660 --> 00:50:05,780
what to do when,
and so on.

720
00:50:05,780 --> 00:50:09,580
I mean, there is a difference
between skipper and crew.

721
00:50:11,100 --> 00:50:15,260
To be honest, I don't think it would
have mattered who'd been my student.

722
00:50:15,260 --> 00:50:19,100
I mean, it was a serendipitous
discovery, because such a piece

723
00:50:19,100 --> 00:50:21,580
of equipment had been set up.

724
00:50:21,580 --> 00:50:24,980
I mean, the discovery of pulsars
was unavoidable

725
00:50:24,980 --> 00:50:27,420
once that survey had begun.

726
00:50:29,700 --> 00:50:31,340
Serendipity is very important,

727
00:50:31,340 --> 00:50:35,780
but I think you shouldn't
exaggerate how important it is.

728
00:50:35,780 --> 00:50:39,220
It would have been very easy for
Jocelyn just to simply ignore that

729
00:50:39,220 --> 00:50:44,020
and put it in the not-interesting
bracket interference box...

730
00:50:44,020 --> 00:50:45,940
but she didn't do that.

731
00:50:45,940 --> 00:50:50,420
What Jocelyn had done was recognise
that there was something happening,

732
00:50:50,420 --> 00:50:52,660
and happening
in a repetitive manner

733
00:50:52,660 --> 00:50:56,660
I suspect that
perhaps only one in 100 people,

734
00:50:56,660 --> 00:50:59,300
given the same circumstances,
would have spotted it.

735
00:50:59,300 --> 00:51:03,820
It's not as though it's something
that everybody would spot.

736
00:51:03,820 --> 00:51:07,140
She kept, I think, perhaps more
meticulous records than probably

737
00:51:07,140 --> 00:51:10,860
her supervisor might have expected
about what was going on.

738
00:51:10,860 --> 00:51:14,380
And I think that they provided the
core evidence that really drove

739
00:51:14,380 --> 00:51:18,540
the whole discovery of pulsars. So
yes, she was lucky she was there.

740
00:51:18,540 --> 00:51:22,180
But if she hadn't done it, it may
have been many years before anybody

741
00:51:22,180 --> 00:51:24,940
got round to it seriously.

742
00:51:25,740 --> 00:51:30,020
One of the questions it's always
interesting to ask

743
00:51:30,020 --> 00:51:33,260
is why weren't pulsars
discovered earlier?

744
00:51:33,260 --> 00:51:37,220
And in fact, they were seen earlier,

745
00:51:37,220 --> 00:51:39,540
but not recognised.

746
00:51:39,540 --> 00:51:44,500
And there are a number of stories
around about people who saw pulsars,

747
00:51:44,500 --> 00:51:47,900
but didn't realise what they were
seeing and didn't follow it through.

748
00:51:50,340 --> 00:51:55,420
The earliest one I know comes
from the late '50s, I believe,

749
00:51:55,420 --> 00:51:59,420
at an optical telescope
which was open to the public

750
00:51:59,420 --> 00:52:03,540
and the telescope was trained on that
funny star in the middle

751
00:52:03,540 --> 00:52:06,660
of the Crab Nebula
known as Minkowski's Star.

752
00:52:06,660 --> 00:52:10,940
A young woman stepped up to the
telescope and said,

753
00:52:10,940 --> 00:52:14,780
"That star's flashing." Elliot Moore,
the professional astronomer,

754
00:52:14,780 --> 00:52:18,540
who was on duty that night,
explained to this woman, you know,

755
00:52:18,540 --> 00:52:20,220
that stars scintillate, twinkle.

756
00:52:20,220 --> 00:52:26,700
She said, "I'm a pilot,
I hold an aeroplane pilot's licence,

757
00:52:26,700 --> 00:52:31,940
"I know about scintillation,
twinkling...that star's flashing."

758
00:52:31,940 --> 00:52:34,620
Now the pulsar in the Crab Nebula,

759
00:52:34,620 --> 00:52:38,460
which is what Minkowski's Star
actually is, flashes 30 times

760
00:52:38,460 --> 00:52:44,620
a second, which is very very fast,
and a lot of people can't see that.

761
00:52:44,620 --> 00:52:46,860
But actually, some people can.

762
00:52:46,860 --> 00:52:52,500
I think she probably did see it and I
think Elliot Moore believes she did,

763
00:52:52,500 --> 00:52:56,500
but it wasn't followed through, it
wasn't published, it wasn't recorded.

764
00:52:58,780 --> 00:53:00,940
What's happening with it now?

765
00:53:00,940 --> 00:53:05,300
The girl who started all the fuss
about the pulsars, Jocelyn Bell.

766
00:53:05,300 --> 00:53:09,340
Our picture of how science
is done has changed markedly.

767
00:53:09,340 --> 00:53:14,420
The picture used to be that there was
a senior man, it always was a man,

768
00:53:14,420 --> 00:53:17,460
who had charge of a
whole team of people.

769
00:53:17,460 --> 00:53:20,420
And the people in the team weren't
expected to think,

770
00:53:20,420 --> 00:53:26,020
they just did what the boss told
them. And if that is the true picture

771
00:53:26,020 --> 00:53:31,180
then it's quite fair that the boss
takes the blame or the credit.

772
00:53:31,180 --> 00:53:33,660
But these days we have
a different picture.

773
00:53:33,660 --> 00:53:37,780
We have much more a picture of
a team of people working together,

774
00:53:37,780 --> 00:53:43,020
each contributing from their own
strength, each adding ideas,

775
00:53:43,020 --> 00:53:45,900
a much more egalitarian picture.

776
00:53:45,900 --> 00:53:48,580
I think when I was a grad student

777
00:53:48,580 --> 00:53:52,420
that was actually what was happening
but in an unrecognised way.

778
00:53:52,420 --> 00:53:57,300
We were still in the old 1920s, 1930s
picture.

779
00:53:57,300 --> 00:54:00,140
Although that wasn't
really what was happening.

780
00:54:00,140 --> 00:54:03,780
It's almost like it
was the intellectual property

781
00:54:03,780 --> 00:54:08,860
of the university and therefore
it was the heads of department

782
00:54:08,860 --> 00:54:11,500
who were recognised for it.

783
00:54:11,500 --> 00:54:16,380
She is remarkably calm and
unbothered about it and...

784
00:54:19,020 --> 00:54:21,260
doesn't make a fuss about it at all.

785
00:54:21,260 --> 00:54:27,300
You can actually do extremely well
out of not getting a Nobel Prize.

786
00:54:27,300 --> 00:54:31,300
I have had so many prizes and so
many honours and so many awards,

787
00:54:31,300 --> 00:54:35,820
that I think I've had far more fun
than if I'd got a Nobel Prize,

788
00:54:35,820 --> 00:54:40,140
which is a bit flash in the pan.
You get it, you have a fun week,

789
00:54:40,140 --> 00:54:43,460
and it's all over and nobody gives
you anything else after that

790
00:54:43,460 --> 00:54:46,820
because they feel
they can't match it.

791
00:54:51,300 --> 00:54:52,620
For Jocelyn Bell Burnell,

792
00:54:52,620 --> 00:54:57,220
the real enemy of science is not the
allocation, or otherwise, of prizes,

793
00:54:57,220 --> 00:55:01,860
it is the belief that science
can arrive at an ultimate truth.

794
00:55:01,860 --> 00:55:06,820
There are people around, I think,

795
00:55:06,820 --> 00:55:11,420
who believe they have got there,
believe they understand it all

796
00:55:13,980 --> 00:55:18,940
and they're no longer open
to new experiences,

797
00:55:18,940 --> 00:55:21,980
new ideas, new revelations.

798
00:55:21,980 --> 00:55:25,020
I don't think you
should be so closed.

799
00:55:27,260 --> 00:55:31,660
If we assume we've arrived,
we stop searching.

800
00:55:33,660 --> 00:55:35,180
We stop developing.

801
00:55:39,860 --> 00:55:41,940
Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell

802
00:55:41,940 --> 00:55:44,820
has enjoyed a hugely
successful career.

803
00:55:47,140 --> 00:55:50,820
She has gone from being "the girl
who discovered pulsars"

804
00:55:50,820 --> 00:55:55,500
to recognition as one of the
outstanding scientists of our time.

805
00:56:00,380 --> 00:56:04,100
Though she has played a significant
part in our greater understanding

806
00:56:04,100 --> 00:56:09,380
of the Universe, she insists there
is still some way to go in telling

807
00:56:09,380 --> 00:56:11,620
the complete story of the Cosmos.

808
00:56:13,980 --> 00:56:18,820
I can see a number of important
issues facing astronomers today.

809
00:56:21,380 --> 00:56:25,700
There are questions about
the future of the Universe.

810
00:56:25,700 --> 00:56:28,660
We believe we understand
that the Universe started

811
00:56:28,660 --> 00:56:33,180
with what we call the Big Bang,
13, 14 billion years ago...

812
00:56:33,180 --> 00:56:36,180
and that it's been expanding
ever since.

813
00:56:36,180 --> 00:56:39,980
One of the things we have recently
discovered is that the expansion

814
00:56:39,980 --> 00:56:44,740
appears to be getting faster,
which is totally counter-intuitive.

815
00:56:44,740 --> 00:56:48,380
You would expect the gravity
between the galaxies to actually

816
00:56:48,380 --> 00:56:51,460
be slowing the expansion,
and it's not, it's getting faster.

817
00:56:57,740 --> 00:57:01,100
Something is acting
to oppose gravity.

818
00:57:01,100 --> 00:57:05,020
Something is pushing the
galaxies apart, faster and faster

819
00:57:05,020 --> 00:57:08,460
and at the moment we have
very little clue what that is.

820
00:57:08,460 --> 00:57:11,740
We call it dark energy,
but that doesn't actually tell us

821
00:57:11,740 --> 00:57:14,100
what it is, it's just a label.

822
00:57:17,260 --> 00:57:22,660
It is hard to understand. I'm not
sure how we're going to make progress

823
00:57:22,660 --> 00:57:27,300
on that one, but it's something that
a lot of people are fascinated by.

824
00:57:31,260 --> 00:57:35,020
Looking at the Universe as
a whole cosmology, the birth, life

825
00:57:35,020 --> 00:57:37,460
and death of the whole Universe...

826
00:57:37,460 --> 00:57:40,100
We used to have a nice, simple model.

827
00:57:40,100 --> 00:57:45,140
Then we added things like dark
energy. And our nice, simple picture

828
00:57:45,140 --> 00:57:48,260
is getting messier and messier
and messier.

829
00:57:54,940 --> 00:57:59,820
I have this sense that we need
to picture cosmology, the evolution

830
00:57:59,820 --> 00:58:03,580
of the Universe, in a whole new way.

831
00:58:08,020 --> 00:58:11,380
I'm probably not one that
can achieve this new thinking.

832
00:58:11,380 --> 00:58:16,740
Somebody will, and at the moment,
we are waiting for it to happen.

833
00:58:16,740 --> 00:58:19,700
A bit like a pregnant pause.

834
00:58:21,540 --> 00:58:25,660
A bit like what happens when there's
a snowfall, first snowfall

835
00:58:25,660 --> 00:58:30,260
of the year, and everything goes
quiet, and kind of waits.

836
00:58:30,260 --> 00:58:32,700
I feel we're in that sort of phase.

837
00:58:36,780 --> 00:58:39,020
Nothing is static.

838
00:58:39,020 --> 00:58:40,660
Nothing is final.

839
00:58:49,860 --> 00:58:52,980
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

840
00:58:52,980 --> 00:58:56,780
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