UTB-TSC students discover pulsar

Anthony Ford and Jesus Rivera have spent hundreds of hours holed up in the Arecibo Remote Control Center, sifting through the minute reverberations of the universe with goals few people on Earth comprehend.

Ford and Rivera aren't professional scientists. In fact, they're just midway through their first year at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College.

But already, these two brains can lay partial claim to the discovery of a previously undetected pulsar hovering above the Milky Way's galactic plane.

That's because Ford and Rivera are two of UTB-TSC's five ARCC scholars, physics students at the university who have made a commitment to research pulsars by remotely controlling a telescope stationed in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Their classmate, Drew Fleckenstein, discovered the pulsar while the group was on site in Arecibo.

Rivera says he became interested in the ARCC program in high school when he saw a presentation by Frederick Jenet, who teaches physics at UTB-TSC.

"It was a simplified version (of pulsar research), so he wouldn't scare us off from participating," Rivera said. "It's challenging work. I like it."

Researchers like Jenet believe that monitoring the rate at which light or X-rays are emitted from a pulsar might be a way to detect gravitational waves for the first time.

Sound complicated? That's because it is.

According to NASA's Web site, pulsars are what remains of large stars that have exploded. They form a rotating cone of light, often described as similar to the beam coming from a lighthouse.

When the Earth is in the path of a pulsar, it may be possible to observe this pulsating light. Some pulsars, like the one detected by ARCC scholars, emit X-rays. Others emit gamma rays, radio waves and other forms of radiation.

Gravitational waves are believed to be emitted when entities like black holes collide, or when other large objects bounce against each other in space.

Like other researchers at UTB-TSC and around the world, Jenet is hoping to directly detect gravitational waves. Studying the way the radiation coming from pulsars speeds up or slows down when a gravitational wave passes by may help to lead to such detection.

"It takes maybe 20 or 30 years before you get a deep understanding of these concepts," Jenet said. "We're hoping that by starting these students in high school, we're speeding that process up. It's like learning a foreign language. If you're immersed, you'll have a much easier time learning than in a classroom."

Like language students studying abroad, ARCC scholars are aware of the rewards of their studies immediately. They don't just study pulsars - they discover them.

"It's a wonderful thing that's happening here in Brownsville," said Andrew Miller, an astronomy teacher at Porter High School. "We have this group of kids who are doing the technical work for this international survey. It's pretty amazing."