Astrophysical Beacons

Trae Pina
Astrophysical Beacons



This article is about an astrophysical beacon that has made it possible to measure a solar systems planets mass. This is due to electromagnetic pulses from far-flung celestial. This can provide a sort of scale to measure the mass of a planet. The process relies on a regular series of ultra short blasts of radiation from pulsars. These are caused by extremely dense and rapidly spinning magnetized remnants of a massive collapsed star. That’s like our star being compressed into the size of an American city. The beams of radiation that pulsars emit sweep through the earth with predictable cadence. Earth’s orbit changes the distance by hundreds of light seconds. Astronomers compensate for this by calibrating the times of the radio pulsar waves to a hypothetical observer at the solar systems center of mass, which is in or close to the sun depending on the location of the planets.

This point all depends on the mass of the planets also though. If a wrong mass was taken for a planet then used, it would throw off the times of the pulsar times for years. A team of astronomers were able to derive the masses of five of the solar systems masses using years of pulsar data. These masses back up the masses that astronomers already had. The masses that were already acquired were obtained by measuring the gravitational pull felt by passing spacecraft such as space probes. The masses first taken by passing space probes were more accurate, but the pulsar waves did help with reassuring that the measurements that had been taken. The pulsar waves also help to find unknown objects beyond Neptune. This would be helpful because any unknown mass in the solar system could throw off the pulsar time for years to come.

I believe that this article was published because scientists wanted to share this new way of being able to measure a planets mass. If they had to wait to measure a planets mass using a space probe, it might take a while because of the journey a probe must make to get to the outermost planets and regions of the solar system. The journey and wait could take many years, and scientists need the information fast to be able to time the pulsar waves.