The white dwarf-pulsar binary system PSR J1141–6545 discovered by the CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope. The pulsar orbits its white dwarf companion every 4.8 hours. The white dwarf’s rapid rotation drags space-time around it, causing the entire orbit to change its orientation. (© Mark Myers/ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav), Australia)

Spinning Neutron Star-White Dwarf Binary drags spacetime along with it

As massive objects in space spin, they drag the very fabric of space along with them, a study 20 years in the making uses this phenomenon to investigate a distant binary star system.

Frame dragging —the swirling of spacetime by a massive object as predicted by Einstein’s theory of General Relativity — has been used to investigate the formation of a distant binary star system. The study also opens up the prospect of exciting future applications for the churning of spacetime in answering some of the most pressing questions in astrophysics.

One of the most important aspects of Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity was the idea that space and time are united and can no longer be considered a static stage on which the events of the universe simply play out. One of the consequences of this revelation is the idea that spacetime is a dynamic entity that can be affected by matter and that, as a consequence, a massive object drags…