Stellar Trio Could Put Einstein's Theory of Gravity To the Test 106
sciencehabit writes "In a cosmic coup, astronomers have found a celestial beacon known as a pulsar in orbit with not one, but two other stars. The first-of-its-kind trio could soon be used to put Einstein's theory of gravity, or general relativity, to an unprecedented test. 'It's a wonderful laboratory that nature has given us,' says Paulo Freire, a radio astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, who was not involved in the work. 'It's almost made to order.'"
Re:If only /. beta was tested as much as Einstein (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that the point of a Beta release? To obtain feedback and to fix what isn't right with something?
Re:Will be interesting ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Meh, just simulate it. No need to solve the equations, and simulating it isn't very hard. We have computers now, they are good at this.
But how do you know if your simulation is correct?
Anyone could easily write a sim that has three stars and they all coexist, happily passing through each other or something ridiculous. The point here is that we can see if the Theory and any simulations match the real world.
Re:If only /. beta was tested as much as Einstein (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If only /. beta was tested as much as Einstein (Score:2, Insightful)
True. That should never have made it to the beta stage.
More importantly, a beta should be to get feedback, and aside from writing comments in articles that have nothing to do with it, I see no obvious feedback forum.
Re:"A violation would be a complete revolution." (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that sort of sounds like a bunch of late-night-I've-got-the-munchies BS.
FTA: "Paulo Freire, a radio astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany... says a violation would be 'a complete revolution.'"
No offense, but I'm going to trust the astronomer at the world-renowned scientific institute over the indie-game artist on this one.
Re:Will be interesting ... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just a bloody simple system of differential equations. n bodies, each has a location (3 coordinates) and a speed vector (3 coordinates), so you have six equations. The speed is obviously the derivative of the location, and the theory gives you the equation to calculate the derivative of the speed. Look up Fehlberg or "Adaptive Runge-Kutta-Fehlberg" and you are there.
That's Newton.
With relativity things get hard, quick. Both time (thus, speed) and space (thus, speed and distance) dilate, mass changes (thus, the attractive forces between bodies and thus their acceleration, and thus their speed, and thus their location), and some other oddities.