Although the mislaunching of two European Space Agency (ESA) satellites are giving researches a method testing one aspect of Einstein's theory of general relativity, as previously reported by HNGN, researchers from Pennsylvania State University have come up with a novel way of doing so by using Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), which are blasts of rare radio signals shot off in space. The researchers believe that this method is much more accurate that previous methods, which use gamma-ray bursts.
FRBs last just a few milliseconds and up until now, only a small amount of them have been detected on Earth. However, due to the creation of advanced radio-signal observatories, researchers will be able to observe and analyze these mysterious intergalactic events much more effectively.
"With abundant observational information in the future, we can gain a better understanding of the physical nature of Fast Radio Bursts," Peter Mészáros, senior author of the paper, said in a press release. "When more-powerful detectors provide us with more observations, we also will be able to use Fast Radio Bursts as a probe of their host galaxies, of the space between galaxies, of the cosmic-web structure of the universe, and as a test of fundamental physics."
Part of Einstein's theory of general relativity is the Equivalence Principle, which requires that any two photons of different frequencies should arrive at Earth at the exact same time if they are emitted at the same time, from the same source and travelling through the same gravitational fields.
"If Einstein's Equivalence Principle is correct, any time delay that might occur between these two photons should not be due to the gravitational fields they experienced during their travels, but should be due only to other physical effects," Mészáros said. "By measuring how closely in time the two different-frequency photons arrive, we can test how closely they obey Einstein's Equivalence Principle."
The findings were published in the Dec. 23 issue of Physical Review Letters.
