Topic: General Relativity VS the Pulsar Test

[Nemesis]

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The double pulsar system, PSR J0737-3039A and B, is 2000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Puppis. It consists of two massive, highly compact neutron stars, each weighing more than our own Sun but only about 20 km across, orbiting each other every 2.4 hours at speeds of a million kilometres per hour. Separated by a distance of just a million kilometres, both neutron stars emit lighthouse-like beams of radio waves that are seen as radio "pulses" every time the beams sweep past the Earth. It is the only known system of two detectable radio pulsars orbiting each other. Due to the large masses of the system, they provide an ideal opportunity to test aspects of General Relativity:

    * Gravitational redshift: the time dilation causes the pulse rate from one pulsar to slow when near to the other, and vice versa.

    * Shapiro delay: The pulses from one pulsar when passing close to the other are delayed by the curvature of space-time. Observations provide two tests of General Relativity using different parameters.

    * Gravitational radiation and orbital decay: The two co-rotating neutron stars lose energy due to the radiation of gravitational waves. This results in a gradual spiralling in of the two stars towards each other until they will eventually coalesce into one body.

Though all the independent tests available in the double pulsar system agree with Einstein's theory, the one that gives the most precise result is the time delay, known as the Shapiro Delay, which the signals suffer as they pass through the curved space-time surrounding the two neutron stars. It is close to 90 millionths of a second and the ratio of the observed and predicted values is 1.0001 +/- 0.0005 - a precision of 0.05%.

A number of other relativistic effects predicted by Einstein can also be observed. "We see that, due to its mass, the fabric of space-time around a pulsar is curved. We also see that the pulsar clock runs slower when it is deeper in the gravitational field of its massive companion, an effect known as "time dilation".

Looks like relativity passes another test.