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Triple star system discovered; Could contain secrets of gravity
Topic Started: Jan 5 2014, 08:08 PM (146 Views)
CJ
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A very minor case of serious brain damage

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25598051

Astronomers have discovered a unique triple star system which could reveal the true nature of gravity.

They found a pulsar with two white dwarfs all packed in a space smaller than Earth's orbit of the Sun.

The trio's unusually close orbits allow precise measurements of gravity and could resolve difficulties with Einstein's theories.

The results appear in Nature journal and will be presented at the 223rd American Astronomical Society meeting.

"This triple system gives us a natural cosmic laboratory far better than anything found before for learning exactly how such three-body systems work and potentially for detecting problems with general relativity that physicists expect to see under extreme conditions," said Scott Ransom of the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Charlottesville, VA.



I did learn a bit about these three-body systems at university. They're still quite mysterious, apparently - and I certainly didn't know that anything like this existed, so it'll be interesting to see what they can learn from it!
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