20180108 - Dr Jerry Dunifer - Pulsar 1913+16 and the Nobel Prize

The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics, announced October 3, 2017, was awarded to Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish, and Kip Thorne for their direct detection of gravitational waves using LIGO. But that wasn't the first Nobel awarded for detection of gravitational waves! There was another Nobel Prize, awarded 24 years earlier, for an indirect detection of gravitational waves. This is the story of that discovery.

The earlier Nobel Prize was given to Joseph Taylor and Russell Hulse, both of Princeton University, for their detection of the first binary-pulsar system and their measurements showing the system was losing energy at exactly the same rate expected for the generation of gravitational waves as predicted by Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. The binary pulsar, now known as Pulsar 1913+16, had an orbital period that was decreasing at the rate of 75 microseconds/year, which agreed within 0.5% of the value calculated from the General Theory of Relativity.

Jerry Dunifer is a Professor Emeritus in the Physics and Astronomy Department at Wayne State University. He enjoys observing solar eclipses, visiting astronomical observatories around the world, sailing, flying airplanes, and traveling to exotic locations such as the North and South Poles. At Wayne State, Jerry's research involved Millimeter-Wave Transmission Spectroscopy in high-purity metals subjected to intense magnetic fields. He also wrote proposals for funding which resulted in the Department's current Planetarium and Observation Domes on the roof of the Physics Building.

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