Radiation from other sources
When should stars grow closer to each other?
Gravitational wave
Although the waves from the Earth-Sun system are minuscule, astronomers can point to other sources for which the radiation should be substantial. One important example is the Hulse-Taylor binary — a pair of stars, one of which is a pulsar. The characteristics of their orbit can be deduced from the Doppler shifting of radio signals given off by the pulsar. Each of the stars has a mass about 1.4 times that of the Sun and the size of their orbit is about 1/75 of the Earth-Sun orbit. This means the distance between the two stars is just a few times larger than the diameter of our own Sun. The combination of greater masses and smaller separation means that the energy given off by the Hulse-Taylor binary will be far greater than the energy given off by the Earth-Sun system — roughly 1022 times as much. The information about the orbit can be used to predict just how much energy (and angular momentum) should be given off in the form of gravitational waves. As the energy is carried off, the stars should draw closer to each other. This effect is called an inspiral, and it can be observed in the pulsar's signals. The measurements on the Hulse-Taylor system have been carried out over more than 30 years. It has been shown that the gravitational radiation predicted by general relativity allows these observations to be matched within 0.2 percent. In 1993, Russell Hulse and Joe Taylor were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for this work, which was the first indirect evidence for gravitational waves. Unfortunately, the orbital lifetime of this binary system before merger is about 1.84 billion years. This is a substantial fraction of the age of the universe. Inspirals are very important sources of gravitational waves. Any time two compact objects (white dwarfs, neutron stars, or black holes) are in close orbits, they send out intense gravitational waves. As they spiral closer to each other, these waves become more intense. At some point they should become so intense that direct detection by their effect on objects on Earth or in space is possible. This direct detection is the goal of several large scale experiments. The only difficulty is that most systems like the Hulse-Taylor binary are so far away. The amplitude of waves given off by the Hulse-Taylor binary as seen on Earth would be roughly "h" ≈ 10−26. There are some sources, however, that astrophysicists expect to find with much larger amplitudes of "h" ≈ 10−20. At least eight other binary pulsars have been discovered.