little green men is a documentary film about high school students searching for pulsars (a certain type of collapsed star) using radio astronomy data from West Virginia's Green Bank Telescope through the Pulsar Search Collaboratory (PSC).
Why little green men? No, our
film isn’t about aliens, although Frank Drake did begin his search for
extra-terrestrial life (now known as SETI) at Green Bank. "Little Green
Men,", or LGM-1, was the 'nickname' first given to an unknown radio
signal discovered in 1967, by Jocelyn Bell, then a graduate student at
Cambridge. Once it became clear that the signal was not an alien
communication, but rather radio waves emitted by a collapsed star, the
name 'pulsar' was created to describe this newly discovered stellar
object.
So far our students have discovered seven pulsars, including two
rotating radio transients (RRATs), which are unusual pulsars with very
sporadic emission. Our first discoverer - who was 15 at the time - even
got invited to the White House. You can see him with President and Mrs.
Obama in the preview.