"Air force had early warning of pulsars"

[MeteorWayne]

Interesting news story in the Aug 30 Nature:<br /><br />Apparently, one bored (at the time) guy, now 81 year old Charles Schisler, working on the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System at Clear Air Force Station in Alaska, actually detcted the Crab Nebula pulsar months before the first scientific papers were published.<br /><br />In the summer of '67, he noticed a faint signal on his radar looking for pulsed returns off of missiles launched from Siberia, some 4800 km away.<br />After a while he noticed that the signal appeared 4 minutes earlier every day.<br />That should set off an alarm bell in an astonomer's head, since the stars rise 4 minutes earlier every day as a result of the earth's motion around the sun.<br />He calculated the approximate position in the sky, and checked it out one weekend with an astronomy professor at the U of Alaska, who identified the position as that of the Crab Nebula.<br /><br />Throughout the rest of the summer and early autumn, he kept a meticulous log of his observations, during which time he spotted about a dozen objects. He says never understood what he was looking at until after the papers came out, which resulted in a Nobel Prize for the supervisor (Anthony Hewish) of the person that did the observations he reported (Jocelyn Bell Burnell)<br /><br />Mr Schisler, of course, could not speak about his observations, being a top secret installation. Once the system at Clear was decomissioned, he felt free to do so. Astronomers have verified the accuracy of his log books.<br /><br />Schisler said "I wish we had a way to communicate with the scientific community."<br /><br />Indeed <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[robnissen]

Interesting story. I wonder if there are any more out there like this that are still classified.

 

[adrenalynn]

And what else outside of the realm of [current] general scientific knowledge is already documented? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>.</p><p><font size="3">bipartisan</font>  (<span style="color:blue" class="pointer"><span class="pron"><font face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size="2">bī-pär'tĭ-zən, -sən</font></span></span>) [Adj.]  Maintaining the ability to blame republications when your stimulus plan proves to be a devastating failure.</p><p><strong><font color="#ff0000"><font color="#ff0000">IMPE</font><font color="#c0c0c0">ACH</font> <font color="#0000ff"><font color="#c0c0c0">O</font>BAMA</font>!</font></strong></p> </div>

 

[a_lost_packet_]

Very interesting story. Too bad his security restrictions limited who he could talk to.<br /><br />Actually, his remark about better communications with the scientific community should be taken to heart. Of course, security is a big concern but I can't help but wonder why there wouldn't be easier communications between certain military or civilian branches that would have been able to identify such things back then. Nowadays, any branch of Space Command, at least, should have been able to identify those signals fairly easily. I'm sure better communication is there now then there was back then. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font size="1">I put on my robe and wizard hat...</font> </div>

 

[MeteorWayne]

True.<br />The military has released info when they realize it is of value to the scientific community, but I bet that would not happen under the supersecret current administration.<br /><br />Up my alley, detections of large meteoritic fireball explosions by military satellites are released to the community; with this information the accuracy of "number and size" of fireball statistics has improved significantly.<br /><br />I also seem to recall military sats inspired the search for gamma ray sources due to detections, but don't recall too many details. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[halcyondays]

The US Navy co-operated with scientists in the 1960s and 1970s when the theories of sea-floor spreading and plate tectonics were being perfected. Information about sea floor topography and sophisticated sonar/tracking data were offered to scientists.