Dr. Maura McLaughlin (WVU): "Detecting Monster Black Holes with a Galaxy-Size Observatory"

Pulsars are neutron stars that are formed in supernova explosions following the collapse of massive evolved stars. These exotic objects weigh more than the Sun and can spin over 700 times a second. They have extremely high magnetic fields - over a trillion times the Earth’s! These properties make them energetic sources of radio waves, which are beamed along their magnetic axes. We detect a "pulse" of radio emission once every pulsar rotation period, in a similar manner to a lighthouse. These pulses can be timed very precisely with large radio telescopes and very small perturbations to the expected arrival times can be detected. In this talk, I will describe how we have used a network of these “cosmic clocks” to build a galaxy-sized observatory to detect invisible ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves from the most massive black holes in the Universe!

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