A closer look
Even the most brilliant minds instantly jump to aliens when something weird happens in space. When astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered the first radio pulsar in 1967, the signal was so remarkably regular and pulsing that the team jokingly designated it LGM-1, standing for 'Little Green Men'. While it turned out to just be a rapidly spinning neutron star, for a brief, glorious moment, serious scientists entertained the idea that extraterrestrials were blasting us with a cosmic metronome.
