Little Green Men

In 1967, Jocelyn Bell, a graduate student at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, England, noticed something very strange on the chart records of radio sources from stars that she was examining. A very steady "pulse" was being recorded from intergalactic space.

Much too orderly to be a natural phenomenon, she thought, and began an investigation. What was it? A hoax, or perhaps a genuine attempt at extraterrestrial contact. For lack of a better name, the steady pulses were designated LGM, which stood for Little Green Men.

In 1968, Dr. Bell discovered that the "beeps" were real. They emanated from a type of star called a neutron. It was the rotation of these neutron stars that caused the very exact periodicity of the pulses. Although Dr. Bell proved there was a scientific explanation for the signals, for a while there, little green men were almost a reality.