More than 100 years after Albert Einstein presented his theory of gravity, scientists around the world continue their efforts to find flaws in general relativity. The observation of any deviation from General Relativity would constitute a major discovery that would open a window on new physics beyond our current theoretical understanding of the Universe.
The research team’s leader, Michael Kramer from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, Germany, says: “We studied a system of compact stars that is an unrivaled laboratory to test gravity theories in the presence of very strong gravitational fields. 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 1000 times better than currently possible with gravitational wave detectors.” He explains that the observations are not only in agreement with the theory, “but we were also able to see effects that could not be studied before”. Ingrid Stairs from the University of British Columbia at Vancouver gives an example: “We follow the propagation of radio photons emitted from a cosmic lighthouse, a pulsar, and track their motion in the strong gravitational field of a companion pulsar. We see for the first time how the light is not only delayed due to a strong curvature of spacetime around the companion, but also that the light is deflected by a small angle of 0.04 degrees that we can detect. Never before has such an experiment been conducted at such a high spacetime curvature.” Read more...
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