Cosmic Clocks Keep Time in the Search for Gravitational Waves

Excerpt:

Quote:

But what truly astounded pulsar scientists over the years was the discovery that in some of these fast pulsars, those pulses are more accurately spaced than the second hand on a wristwatch; and some pulsars are so precise that they rival the most accurate clocks ever built by humans. In a universe where so many things seem disordered and messy (even if they obey a strict set of physical laws), the neatness of pulsar timing is striking. (The scientists who first discovered pulsars were so surprised by the regularity of the blinking, they couldn't help but consider that these were signals from an intelligent alien civilization). And so it is understandably strange to see the pulses of light from a very accurate pulsar suddenly not be so accurate. A change in the arrival time of these pulses suggests that something is happening as the light travels toward the Earth; perhaps a gravitational wave passed by, and stretched or compressed the space between the pulsar and the Earth. And that's what scientists around the world are hunting for with Pulsar Timing Arrays. http://ift.tt/2aIE6Pc

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2aKPM5d