Little green men is an expression popularly used to describe the occupants of supposed UFOs of extraterrestrial origin. While the exact origin of the phrase is unknown, green-hued humanoid aliens have been a stable of science fiction writing since at least 1911 when Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote his Martian Tales. Pulp fiction tales of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon displayed covers of their hero battling green alien monsters, as did subsequent fiction.

During the flying saucer sightings of the 1950s, the term little green men came into popular usage. In the Kelly-Hopkinsville sighting on August 21, 1955, two rural Kentucky men described a supposed encounter with a 3-4 foot tall greenish, somewhat humanoid-looking alien.

Pulsars

In astronomy, a famous observation was explained as little green men; in this observation, radio signals which were detected by a U.K. observatory were first assumed to be spurious noise, rather than an astronomical phenomenon. The signal has a 1.337 second period and 40 millisecond pulsewidth , and originates at celestial coordinates 19:19 right ascension, 21 degrees declination. It was detected by individual observation of miles of graphical data traces, by Jocelyn Bell.

This possible explanation, or hypothesis, during the discovery of the first pulsar CP1919 by Jocelyn Bell and Anthony Hewish in 1967, was propounded because of the regularity of the radio signal emanating from an astronomical object. If the signal were spurious, it would not be classified as a genuine scientific discovery . They decided that the signal detection was not a mistake, and Hewish was subsequently recognized with a Nobel Prize.

Bell notes that other scientists could have discovered pulsars before her, but their observations were either ignored, or disregarded. For example, Bell relates the story that one piece of equipment was "fixed" by a smart whack, and the researcher missed his chance.

Bell admiringly notes that Sir Fred Hoyle identified this astronomical object as a neutron star immediately upon their announcement.

References

• Anna Karyl, The Kelly Incident, 2004, ISBN 29094-040814-200748-57.
• Jacques Valee, Anatomy of a Phenomenon: Unidentifed Objects in Space, 1965, ISBN 0809298880.