Science
Galactic Accelerometers Probe Milky Way’s Dark Side – Physics
Binary pulsars can serve as sensitive accelerometers that probe the gravitational forces in our Galaxy, which could help in building a detailed picture of the dark…

Fourteen binary pulsars in a 1-cubic-kiloparsec volume around the Solar System (shown in the inset) serve as sensitive sensors of galactic acceleration.
Stars whiz through the Milky Way at hundreds of kilometers per second, but their velocities can slowly change under the gravitational pull of both visible bodies and dark matter structures. Such speed changes, however, are typically tiny: Over a year, they may amount to a few centimeters per second—about the pace of a crawling infant. A new study…
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