During the last 15 years, radio astronomers from the different teams have carefully monitored the pulses from a total of around 100 rapidly spinning pulsars. 'We use the incredible regularity of their signals to search for minute changes in their ticking to detect the subtle stretching and squeezing of space-time.'īritish astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell observed the first pulsar in 1967.

'Pulsars are excellent natural clocks,' David Champion, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and EPTA, said in the statement.

When some of them point toward Earth, they appear as highly regular radio pulses. The beams can sweep across space several hundred times per second. Pulsars are remnants of supernova explosions: dying stars that collapse into highly magnetized and rapidly spinning neutron stars that continuously emit beams of electromagnetic radiation. (Image credit: NRAO) A galactic-scale gravitational wave detectorĪstronomers measure how the distance between Earth and pulsars in the Milky Way changes because of gravitational waves that travel through our galaxy. The Very Large Array in New Mexico was one of several radio telescope facilities that carried out the 15-year gravitational wave search.

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