Dr. Becky | Why Jupiter made the new gravitational wave discovery possible #shorts @DrBecky | Uploaded 1 year ago | Updated 2 days ago
My favourite fact about the whole big new gravitational wave news is that we could only do this NOW because we now know the precise position of the planet JUPITER! With a pulsar timing array you need to time the precise time that pulses arrive here on Earth, and if they change you know it’s due to a gravitational wave passing by. BUT the Earth is not stationary, it orbits the Sun which changes the arrival time of the pulses. So you need to know the exact position of the Earth compared to the stationary centre of the Solar System; which is NOT the centre of the Sun. Jupiter is so massive it pulls the centre of mass OUTSIDE the surface of the Sun, so to know where Earth is you also need to know where Jupiter is. It’s only thanks to the Juno probe (@nasajuno) in orbit around Jupiter since 2016 that we’ve been able to do this!
👩🏽💻 I’m Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don’t know. If you’ve ever wondered about something in space and couldn’t find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.
My favourite fact about the whole big new gravitational wave news is that we could only do this NOW because we now know the precise position of the planet JUPITER! With a pulsar timing array you need to time the precise time that pulses arrive here on Earth, and if they change you know it’s due to a gravitational wave passing by. BUT the Earth is not stationary, it orbits the Sun which changes the arrival time of the pulses. So you need to know the exact position of the Earth compared to the stationary centre of the Solar System; which is NOT the centre of the Sun. Jupiter is so massive it pulls the centre of mass OUTSIDE the surface of the Sun, so to know where Earth is you also need to know where Jupiter is. It’s only thanks to the Juno probe (@nasajuno) in orbit around Jupiter since 2016 that we’ve been able to do this!
👩🏽💻 I’m Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don’t know. If you’ve ever wondered about something in space and couldn’t find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.
