Pulsars are some of the most bizarre objects in the universe.
And an experiment that’s being developed now may allow
scientists to use pulsars to confirm a prediction in Albert
Einstein’s theory of gravity. A pulsar is the tiny, ultradense
core of a dead star. Some pulsars spin up to hundreds of times
per second, beaming energy into space like a cosmic lighthouse.
The timing of these “pulses” of energy is so precise that
pulsars are some of the best clocks in the universe. And
astronomers may be able to use those clocks to detect something
predicted in Einstein’s equations: gravitational waves. Richard
Price of the University of Texas at Brownsville explains: PRICE:
We can detect these pulsars as if they were perfect clocks fixed
at a point in the universe. When we see some sort of variability
in that timing, we can, in principle, infer that that
variability is due to the passage of a gravitational wave
between us and the pulsar. Gravitational waves are “ripples” in
spacetime caused by the motions of massive