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This pulsar orbits another neutron star with an orbital period of just eight hours. Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that this system should emit strong gravitational radiation, causing the orbit to continually contract as it loses orbital energy. Observations of the pulsar soon confirmed this prediction, providing the first ...
The pulsar was discovered by Russell Alan Hulse and Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr., of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1974. Their discovery of the system and analysis of it earned them the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation." [8]
An intermediate-mass binary pulsar (IMBP) is a pulsar-white dwarf binary system with a relatively long spin period of around 10–200 ms consisting of a white dwarf with a relatively high mass of approximately . [7] The spin periods, magnetic field strengths, and orbital eccentricities of IMBPs are significantly larger than those of low mass binary pulsars (LMBPs). [7]
A pulsar emits beams of radio waves that, like lighthouse beams, sweep through the sky as the pulsar rotates. The signal from a pulsar can be detected by radio telescopes as a series of regularly spaced pulses, essentially like the ticks of a clock. GWs affect the time it takes the pulses to travel from the pulsar to a telescope on Earth.
A pulsar timing array (PTA) is a set of galactic pulsars that is monitored and analyzed to search for correlated signatures in the pulse arrival times on Earth. As ...
The theory of general relativity says that the observed gravitational effect between masses results from their warping of spacetime. By the beginning of the 20th century, Newton's law of universal gravitation had been accepted for more than two hundred years as a valid description of the gravitational force between masses.
The pulsar acts as the reference clock at one end of the arm sending out regular signals which are monitored by an observer on the Earth. The effect of a passing gravitational wave would be to perturb the local space-time metric and cause a change in the observed rotational frequency of the pulsar.
The technique could in theory be also used to detect exomoons around pulsar planets. [26] There are limitations to pulsar planet visibility, however; pulsar glitches and changes in the pulsation mode can mimick the existence of planets.