More than 100 years after Physicist Albert Einstein published his Theory of General Relativity, his ideas continue to stand the test of time thanks to a little help from the Green Bank Telescope.
For decades, scientists have been looking for flaws in Einstein’s theory, which states that massive objects throughout the universe distort the space-time fabric, creating what we know as gravity. Sixteen years ago, a group of international scientists, led by Professor Michael Kramer of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, set out to conduct their own research to once again challenge Einstein’s theory. In the end, their research only reinforced it.
According to information provided by those at the Green Bank Observatory, Kramer and others, including West Virginia University Professors Maura McLaughlin and Duncan Lorimer, began observing two neutron stars as they orbited around each other in a Double Pulsar system first discovered back in 2013.
As the two neutron stars make their orbits, they pulse light, which can be observed using radio telescopes, like the 100-meter diameter National Science Foundation’s telescope located at Green Bank. In addition to the Green Bank Telescope, scientists used six other telescopes located around the world to study the Double Pulsar system.
“We studied a system of compact stars that is an unrivaled laboratory to test gravity theories in the presence of very strong gravitational fields,” stated Kramer in a press release. “To our delight we were able to test a cornerstone of Einstein’s theory, the energy carried by gravitational waves, with a precision that is 25 times better than with the Nobel-Prize winning Hulse-Taylor pulsar, and 1,000 times better than currently possible with gravitational wave detectors.”
He explained that the current observations are not only in agreement with the Theory of General Relativity, “but we were also able to see effects that could not be studied before”.
Ryan Lynch, a Green Bank Observatory scientist who studies pulsars, added “The observations of this Double Pulsar system allowed astronomers to test and confirm seven different predictions of Einstein’s theory of relativity. The Double Pulsars reveal subtle interactions between the internal structure of one of the pulsars and the system as a whole. Since we still don’t know much about the interior of a neutron star, this is a really interesting result. The team is also measuring small changes in the way that light moves through curved space and time that can’t be seen anywhere else.”
“As the recent 2020 Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics shows, astronomers and physicists place a really high priority on uncovering and understanding new physics,” he continued. “The GBT’s capabilities are constantly evolving to be a fundamental part of this exciting work.”
Kramer and others published their findings in “Strong-Field Gravity Tests with the Double Pulsar,” published in Physical Review X.
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