Rundown 1 — pulsar near the Milky Way center (GR tests)

47:20neutron stars are like the size of the sun. Sorry, no, I should say this clearly. It is a neutron star is about the mass of the sun, if not bigger, but it's about the size of a city. >> Okay. >> Okay. extremely dense star where it's called a neutron star because the pressure from gravity is so high that the electrons and the protons fuse together and it's a giant ball of neutrons. Like not even atoms can exist at this amount of gravitational pressure. >> Okay. >> What's cool about pulsars are they are specific types of neutron stars that have a really high spin and they shoot

48:01out radio waves. And the radio waves are like a lighthouse as they're spinning. And pulsars are such that the lighthouse beam is exactly aligned with Earth. >> Okay. >> Okay. There's plenty of neutron stars where the lighthouse beam is not aligned with Earth. >> But for pulsars, we just happen to be lucky enough that the lighthouse beam is aligned with Earth. So when we point our radio dish at that pulsar, we're going to get beep beep beep beep beep metronomic >> radio pulses from that point in the sky. >> Okay, this particular pulsar that they think they found is about 8 milliseconds. This is a millisecond pulsar. So every 8 milliseconds this thing is turning around. Imagine that.

48:43Something the size of the sun if not bigger. About the size of a city. >> The mass of the sun and the size of a city. >> Yeah. Sorry. The mass of the sun but the size of a city rotating around. Right. And given the cons conservation of angular momentum, this thing is not slowing down. >> Okay. >> This thing is going to keep going >> at 8 milliseconds. >> Mhm. >> That makes this a really nice clock. >> Right. >> Okay. And if we find such a really nice clock near the galactic center where there's a giant black hole that is warping space and time, >> yes, >> we can test Einstein's general relativity >> to unprecedented degree.

49:23>> Right. >> That's why everyone's excited about this >> is the idea that the pulsar becomes an instrument in and of itself. >> Yes. Yes, >> that's exactly right. Cuz a lot of things can happen. the gravitational field of the black hole itself can start influencing the pulsar right and maybe if it wobbles a little bit less or the if the timing is delayed we can test Einstein's prediction that way on the other hand >> the radio signal that's coming from the pulsar is light and light is itself >> you know affected by space and time and if there's a lot of warping by that black hole that light is going to get affected so monitoring ing this thing

50:03over years is going to give us extremely nice test >> for Einstein's general theory of relativity. That's why everyone's excited. It's not entirely um >> foolproof the analysis. And so, you know, there's still more stuff that needs to be done to confirm it. >> Yes. >> But it's tantalizingly close. This was out of Columbia University >> and the Breakthrough Listen project, which I don't know if you know that's the like new STEI. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Right. Um, and they they have this giant like breakthrough listen galactic center survey where they conducted like the most sensitive radio search >> for pulsars near the galactic center. >> It was out in the astrophysical journal.

50:44It's something a lot of astrophysicists are very excited about. >> That's very that that is very exciting. Again, it's early as is almost every story we talk about on this podcast. So it goes without saying >> that we're waiting for continued further analysis replication etc. >> And I think it's going to be soon. So you know when we get a confirmation, maybe we'll do a deep dive into it. >> This is this is this is very exciting. That's actually a huge deal. Uh that was our story number one, Colombia Astrophysical Journey. For number two, uh, decoding an ancient Roman board game, an archaeology story about, uh, how AI has now helped us figure out the rules, uh, for this unknown board game from the

51:26Roman period. Yeah, this one was pretty cool. Okay, so there's a 2,000-y old limestone slab that was found in the Netherlands, and it was identified as an