Nature's most precise clocks may make 'galactic GPS' possible: Pulsars help in search for gravitational waves
Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - 02:08
in Astronomy & Space
Radio astronomers have uncovered 17 millisecond pulsars in our galaxy by studying unknown high-energy sources detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The astronomers made the discovery in less than three months. Such a jump in the pace of locating these hard-to-find objects holds the promise of using them as a kind of "galactic GPS" to detect gravitational waves passing near Earth.