Today, a series of articles have been published containing data collected over 25 years of research, promising unprecedented discoveries in the study of the formation and evolution of our Universe and the galaxies that inhabit it. The observations of highly regular pulses emitted by "dead" stars called pulsars are instrumental in constructing a gravitational wave detector on a galactic scale.
"Pulsars are excellent natural clocks, and we can utilize the incredible regularity of their signals to search for minuscule changes in their ticking caused by subtle expansions and contractions of spacetime triggered by gravitational waves from the distant Universe," explains Golam Shaifullah, a researcher at the University of Milano-Bicocca.
The results are based on decades of coordinated observation campaigns, utilizing the five largest radio telescopes in Europe: the Effelsberg Radio Telescope in Germany, the Lovell Telescope at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in the United Kingdom, the Nancay Radio Telescope in France, the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy, and the Westerbork Radio Synthesis Telescope in the Netherlands.
"The dataset from the EPTA is extraordinarily long and dense, and it has expanded the frequency window in which we can observe these waves, allowing for a better understanding of the physics behind merging galaxies and the supermassive black holes they host," stated Alberto Sesana, a full professor and the director of the "B Massive" research group at the University of Milano-Bicocca.
@Photo Credit Danielle Futselaar