How Two Dead Stars Sparked a New Field of Astronomy

Pulsars are more than just cool blinking lights shining across the universe. The discovery of the first binary pulsar paved the way for gravitational wave astronomy astronomy today. Hosted by: Reid Reimers SciShow has a spinoff podcast! It s called SciShow Tangents. Check it out at http://www.scishowtangents.org ---------- Support SciShow by becoming a patron on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scishow ---------- Huge thanks go to the following Patreon supporters for helping us keep SciShow free for everyone forever: Kevin Carpentier, Eric Jensen, Matt Curls, Sam Buck, Christopher R Boucher, Avi Yashchin, Adam Brainard, Greg , Alex Hackman, Sam Lutfi, D.A. Noe, Piya Shedden, Scott Satovsky Jr.Charles Southerland, Patrick D. Ashmore, charles george, Kevin Bealer, Chris Peters ---------- Like SciShow? Want to help support us, and also get things to put on your walls, cover your torso and hold your liquids? Check out our awesome products over at DFTBA Records: http://dftba.com/scishow ---------- Looking for SciShow elsewhere on the internet? Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/scishow Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/scishow Tumblr: http://scishow.tumblr.com Instagram: http://instagram.com/thescishow ---------- Sources: https://www.nature.com/articles/217709a0 http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1975ApJ...195L..51H https://arxiv.org/pdf/1411.3930.pdf https://astrobites.org/2018/02/02/looking-back-at-the-hulse-taylor-binary-pulsar/ https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200602/history.cfm https://www.nature.com/articles/277437a0 https://www.amnh.org/explore/videos/space/gravity-making-waves/essay-waiting-for-gravity-at-ligo https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0264-9381/21/5/005/meta https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102 https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.161101 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/reference/gravitational-waves/ Images: https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/image/ligo20160615f https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10143 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Russell_Alan_Hulse.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2008JosephTaylor.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arecibo_Observatory.png https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20267 https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10582 https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20225 https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10426 https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11086 https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12740 https://nasaviz.gsfc.nasa.gov/12949 https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20136 https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/image/ligo20150731a