Radio pulsars: testing gravity and detecting gravitational waves

Understand

Pulsars are the most stable macroscopic clocks found in nature.

• Spinning with periods as short as a few milliseconds, their stability can supersede that of the best atomic clocks on Earth over timescales of a few years.
• Stable clocks are synonymous with precise measurements, which is why pulsars play a role of paramount importance in testing fundamental physics.
• As a pulsar rotates, the radio beam emitted along its magnetic axis appears to us as pulses because of the lighthouse effect.