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High School Students Discover Pulsar With Widest-Known Orbit

Posted by timothy on from the dancing-light dept.

Science 2.0 reports that A team of high school students analyzed data from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and discovered a never-before-seen pulsar which has the widest orbit of any around a neutron star - one among only a handful of double neutron star systems. ... This pulsar, which received the official designation PSR J1930-1852, was discovered in 2012 by Cecilia McGough, who was a student at Strasburg High School in Virginia at the time, and De'Shang Ray, who was a student at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Baltimore, Maryland. These students were participating in a summer Pulsar Search Collaboratory (PSC) workshop, which is an NSF-funded educational outreach program that involves interested high school students in analyzing pulsar survey data collected by the GBT. Students often spend weeks and months poring over data plots, searching for the unique signature that identifies a pulsar. Those who identify strong pulsar candidates are invited to Green Bank to work with astronomers to confirm their discovery.

19 comments

  1. Discrimination! by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

    > data collected by the GBT

    So they didn't let the L and Q join in?

    --
    I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    1. Re:Discrimination! by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      What is Q, and how is it different from the G?

      My assumption is that it is queer, which is pretty much the same thing as gay, so I don't see the distinction there.

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      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    2. Re:Discrimination! by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      "So they didn't let the L and Q join in?"

      Because if they did, then the asterisk would protest exclusion ("Special characters are not good enough for you now, breeders?")

  2. This sounds like high school science fairs. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This sounds a lot like high school science fairs, where the winners produce displays that are better than anything even talented individual PhD candidates could put together. Then we find out that these kids have parents who are both high-ranking researchers or lab managers, and the science fair projects just happen to deal with whatever the parents' teams of researchers are focusing on. Imagine that! What a coincidence! Yet the focus is all on the high school students, with the major contributions of everybody else involved almost never mentioned.

    1. Re:This sounds like high school science fairs. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, have you not yet learned that life isn't fair?

  3. Orbital Path by Crash24 · · Score: 4, Informative
    Because it's not in the summary and buried at the bottom of the article:

    The orbital path of J1930-1852 spans about 52 million kilometers, roughly the distance between Mercury and the Sun and it orbits its companion once every 45 days.

    1. Re:Orbital Path by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 1

      It sounds like this project originally started as an ambitious yo-mama joke.

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      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  4. Data? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Where can I find this "data"

    1. Re: Data? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Query the database.

  5. Sooo... by Gription · · Score: 3, Funny

    Sp you're saying that AC lamers that come out for "First posts" are enabled by their technically savvy parents?
    I really fail to see any possible connection, or why that would be germane to the subject of the original article.

    1. Re:Sooo... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, just think about your very own situation. You're using the pseudonym "Gription" here, which is just as anonymous to me and everyone else as the name "Anonymous Coward" is. Your mother is paying the rent for the house containing the basement in which you live. Your mother bought you the computer that you're using. Your mother is paying for the Internet that you're using to browse Slashdot. Your mother is paying for the Cheetos that you consumed, including the chunks stuck in your stomach hairs. Your mother is paying for the Mountain Dew that you drink constantly, and spilled on your groin. So your very own existence answers the question you posed: your mother does enable your anonymous commenting here. Do you even have the courtesy to ever thank her for all that she does for you?

    2. Re:Sooo... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I really fail to see any possible connection, or why that would be germane to the subject of the original article.

      Then you must be illiterate. The summary very obviously states:

      These students were participating in a summer Pulsar Search Collaboratory (PSC) workshop, which is an NSF-funded educational outreach program that involves interested high school students in analyzing pulsar survey data collected by the GBT.

      So these students were working with/for a government agency, for crying out loud. This wasn't an independent discovery on their part. They're just cogs in a much bigger machine, and its the presence of this machine that allowed for this discovery to be made. This research machine is funded by American taxpayers.

      The headline should be "National Science Foundation Program Discovers Pulsar With Widest-Known Orbit".

    3. Re:Sooo... by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1, Troll

      Actually, you are clearly the illiterate, fucked-up moron here.

      The GP's point was that the GGP's post was attached to a First Post!, with the clear intention of being a retard to get his post higher up in the post history.

    4. Re:Sooo... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The National Science Foundation currently funds the majority of the GBT project. This funding is about to cease, however. This particular program is intended to get high school students actual scientific study experience, and does so very effectively in my opinion.

      All of the data collected at GBT is publicly available to anyone to analyze worldwide, for free.

      Extracting useful information from the data is what this program was assisting the students to learn how to do.

  6. Get me one with a really short period! by SharpFang · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'd really love to see the discovery of a Quark Star.

    Black Holes have two modes of creation.

    One - observed and well-documented, Supernova explosion, with the core collapsing directly into a black hole.

    The other is only known in theory. A neutron star obtaining enough mass through accretion to collapse either from interstellar gas or by connecting with another star (possibly also neutron). Before that happens though, there is a phase hypothesized between the neutron star and the black hole, where the matter degenerates enough that the neutron structure collapses and the star is composed of unstructured quarks. A little more and it collapses into a Black Hole.

    No such star has been observed, and we don't know what other effects accompany it. The mass window is very narrow, somewhere between 3 and 4 solar masses, but the exact boundaries are not known. Dual systems with neutron stars of very short period are the candidates for this to happen. Hulse-Taylor binary binary will merge within next 300mln years, but I really hope we can observe one within our lifetimes.

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