Nobel Prize physicist to speak at UA
April Robertson
Issue date: 3/30/09 Section: News
Nobel Laureate Joseph Taylor will deliver the 13th annual Robert D. Maurer Distinguished Lecture 7 p.m. Thursday in the Donald W. Reynold Center. Taylor and Russell Hulse discovered the first binary pulsar, which earned them the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Julia Kennefick, a UA physics professor, said Taylor was invited to deliver the lecture, titled "Binary Pulsars and Relativistic Gravity," instead of the UA celebrating the International Year of Astronomy.
Though pulsars are now known as neutron stars, that has not always been common knowledge. When Taylor began observing the first four pulsars in 1968 and attempting to find more, it was merely inclination that pulsars were neutron stars: orbiting magnetized remnants of supernova explosions that produce radio waves, according to Taylor's Nobel Prize-winning lecture. As he began to recognize the unique characteristics of pulsars, he made a computer algorithm to identify them, which soon led to discovering a fifth pulsar.
The binary pulsar has two pulsars, each with a mass akin to the sun, that are in orbit at relatively short distances from each other, according to a Nobel Prize press release. In addition to emitting radio waves, the binary pulsar emits gravitational waves. Taylor and Hulse's discovery nullifies Newton's gravitational physics, but it aided in proving Einstein's general theory of relativity.
Before the discovery of pulsars and binary pulsars, Einstein's general theory of relativity was not seen as a practical theory. The finding of gravitational waves from binary pulsars brought gravitational physics into the spotlight.
Part of Taylor's gravitational discovery enabled exploration of a new subfield in astrophysics by testing the relativistic nature of gravity via comparisons of the universe's pulsar time with the Earth's atomic time.
"The pulsar's pulse period has proved to be extremely stable ... (it) increases by less than 5 percent during 1 million years," according to a Nobel Prize in Physics press release.
Julia Kennefick, a UA physics professor, said Taylor was invited to deliver the lecture, titled "Binary Pulsars and Relativistic Gravity," instead of the UA celebrating the International Year of Astronomy.
Though pulsars are now known as neutron stars, that has not always been common knowledge. When Taylor began observing the first four pulsars in 1968 and attempting to find more, it was merely inclination that pulsars were neutron stars: orbiting magnetized remnants of supernova explosions that produce radio waves, according to Taylor's Nobel Prize-winning lecture. As he began to recognize the unique characteristics of pulsars, he made a computer algorithm to identify them, which soon led to discovering a fifth pulsar.
The binary pulsar has two pulsars, each with a mass akin to the sun, that are in orbit at relatively short distances from each other, according to a Nobel Prize press release. In addition to emitting radio waves, the binary pulsar emits gravitational waves. Taylor and Hulse's discovery nullifies Newton's gravitational physics, but it aided in proving Einstein's general theory of relativity.
Before the discovery of pulsars and binary pulsars, Einstein's general theory of relativity was not seen as a practical theory. The finding of gravitational waves from binary pulsars brought gravitational physics into the spotlight.
Part of Taylor's gravitational discovery enabled exploration of a new subfield in astrophysics by testing the relativistic nature of gravity via comparisons of the universe's pulsar time with the Earth's atomic time.
"The pulsar's pulse period has proved to be extremely stable ... (it) increases by less than 5 percent during 1 million years," according to a Nobel Prize in Physics press release.
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