Journal ArticleDOI
The discovery of the binary pulsar
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The first pulsar discovery was made by Taylor et al. as mentioned in this paper, who described it as a "detective story" with a certain level of compulsive behavior that tries to make sense out of everything that one observes.Abstract:
Exactly 20 years ago today, on December 8, 1973, I was at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico recording in my notebook the confirming observation of the first pulsar discovered by the search which formed the basis for my Ph.D. thesis. As excited as I am sure I was at that point in time, I certainly had no idea of what lay in store for me in the months ahead, a path which would ultimately lead me here today. I would like to take you along on a scientific adventure, a story of intense preparation, long hours, serendipity, and a certain level of compulsive behavior that tries to make sense out of everything that one observes. The remarkable and unexpected result of this detective story was a discovery which is still yielding fascinating scientific results to this day, nearly 20 years later, as Professor Taylor will describe for you in his lecture. I hope that by sharing this story with you, you will be able to join me in reliving the challenges and excitement of this adventure, and that we will all be rewarded with some personal insights as to the process of scientific discovery and the nature of science as a human endeavor.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
The Confrontation Between General Relativity and Experiment
TL;DR: Tests of general relativity at the post-Newtonian level have reached high precision, including the light deflection, the Shapiro time delay, the perihelion advance of Mercury, the Nordtvedt effect in lunar motion, and frame-dragging.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Confrontation between General Relativity and Experiment
TL;DR: Tests of general relativity at the post-Newtonian level have reached high precision, including the light deflection, the Shapiro time delay, the perihelion advance of Mercury, and the Nordtvedt effect in lunar motion.
Journal ArticleDOI
Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology with Gravitational Waves
TL;DR: The most likely sources of gravitational waves are studied and the data analysis methods that are used to extract their signals from detector noise are reviewed, and the consequences of gravitational wave detections and observations for physics, astrophysics, and cosmology are considered.
Journal ArticleDOI
Binary and Millisecond Pulsars
TL;DR: The main properties, demographics and applications of binary and millisecond radio pulsars are reviewed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Testing General Relativity with Pulsar Timing
TL;DR: Pulsars of very different types, including isolated objects and binaries (with short and long-period orbits, and white-dwarf and neutron-star companions) provide the means to test both the predictions of general relativity and the viability of alternate theories of gravity as mentioned in this paper.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Discovery of a pulsar in a binary system
R. A. Hulse,J. H. Taylor +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, a pulsar with a pulsation period that varies systematically between 0.058967 and 0.59045 sec over a cycle of 0.3230 d was detected.
Discovery of a pulsar in a binary system. [PSR 1913 + 16]
TL;DR: The newly discovered pulsar PSR 1913 + 16, which has a period of approximately 0/sup 5/059 and which undergoes periodic Doppler shifts, indicating that it is a member of a binary system, is discussed in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI
A deep sample of new pulsars and their spatial extent in the Galaxy.
R. A. Hulse,J. H. Taylor +1 more
TL;DR: The survey reached a limiting average flux density of approx.1 mJy, and appears to have detected a limit to the spatial distribution of pulsars in this direction, at a distance corresponding to DM=260 cm$sup -3$ pc as mentioned in this paper.