==============
 Jodrell Bank
==============


I visited one of the world's radio telescopes and was delighted to
find statue of Copernicus at the site.

.. image:: images/jodrellcoper.png

Jodrell Bank was heavily involved in the early explorations of
quasars.  

The cosmic microwave background was observed around the same time, and
again interpretted through the lens of the Big Bang theory, becoming
one of the three pillars of the theory.

Gamma-ray bursts similarly hint of dramatic events in the early
universe, but also provide explanations for some mysteries such as how
we got so many heavy elements in such short a time?

Back in Fred Hoyle's time, observations of quasars, by radio
telescopes were interpretted as extremely powerful, very distant
objects, from an early stage of the universe.

As we do not see such objects near to home, this helps strengthen the
Big Bang theory.

Jodrell Bank is also providing key data for the pulsar timing array.

It turns out that pulsars are an important part of this story.

Fast rotating neutron stars.  Stable clocks.  Binary systems showing
orbital decay in line with general relativity and the Kerr metric.