A new research discovered a triple star system packed in a space smaller than the Earth's orbit around the Sun which doesn't follow Albert Einstein's General Relativity theory.
The General Relativity theory was published by Albert Einstein in 1916 and has been accepted even by modern physics. His theory claimed that the force of gravity is dependent on the curvature of space and time. It explains the motions of planets, the history and expansion of the universe, the physics of black holes and the light from distant stars and galaxies.
An international team of astronomers, including the University of British Columbia (UBC) astronomer Ingrid Stairs, discovered a triple star system packed in a space smaller than the Earth's orbit around the sun causing astronomers to probe among various cosmic mysteries.
The superdense-pulsar - 4,200 light-years from Earth, spinning nearly 366 times per second -was originally discovered by an American graduate student using the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope. It was found to be in orbit with a white dwarf star which was also found to be in orbit around another more distant white dwarf.
This newly discovered triple star system has given scientists the opportunity to discover some violations in Albert Einstein's theory of General Relativity.
UBC's Department of Physics and Astronomy Ingrid Stairs said in a university press release, "By doing very high-precision timing of the pulses coming from the pulsar, we can test for such a deviation from the strong equivalence principle at a sensitivity several orders of magnitude greater than ever before available."
"Finding a deviation from the strong equivalence principle would indicate a breakdown of General Relativity and would point us toward a new, revised theory of gravity," she added.
Scott Ransom of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) also said in the press release, "This is the first millisecond pulsar found in such a system". This triple system provides astronomers a natural cosmic laboratory for learning about how three-body systems work. It also provides information for potentially detecting problems with Einstein's theory of General Relativity.
The National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope, the Acrecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, and the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope in the Netherlands were used in the scientists' observational program. Data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the GALEX satellite, the WIYN telescope on KITT Peak, Arizona, and the Spitzer Space Telescope were also studied.
The study was published in the January 5 issue of Nature.
