Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicted spinning celestial bodies can drag space-time with them. According to the German scientist’s theory, the faster a body spins, the more space-time it can pull, known as frame dragging.
Experts already knew gravity can alter space-time – with a strong gravitational pull being able to stretch time – but experts have now shown Einstein’s 105 year old theory to be correct, with space-time also being dragged by spinning objects.
To make the discovery, astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, analysed one of the fastest spinning orbits in the cosmos.
The team studied an odd pairing of a white dwarf star (about the size of Earth but about 300,000 times heavier) and a radio pulsar (just the size of a city but 400,000 times heavier), known collectively as PSR J1141-6545.
The pulsar spins at a staggering 150 times every minute, producing a “lighthouse beam” of radio waves emitted towards Earth, while the white dwarf rotates every two minutes.
By analysing the radio waves, the team were then able to deduce how quickly the pulsar and the white dwarf orbit each other – slightly less than once every five hours.
With this information, scientists were then able to track the beam of radio waves, to notice they had an ever so slight drag when they passed by the star, according to the study published in the journal Science.
The drag is so small from when it should have arrived that there was only a 100 microseconds delay over a period of nearly 20 years, using the Parkes and UTMOST radio telescopes in Australia.
Matthew Bailes, from Swinburne University of Technology and Vivek Venkatraman Krishnan, from the Max Planck Institute, wrote for The Conversation: “Mapping the evolution of orbits is not for the impatient, but our measurements are ridiculously precise.
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“This tilting is what we observed through our patient mapping of the pulsar’s orbit.
“Einstein himself thought many of his predictions about space and time would never be observable.
“Fortunately there is still a role in exploring general relativity for 50-year-old radio telescopes like the one at Parkes, and for patient campaigns by generations of graduate students.”