Highlights — Some exciting recent scientific results from our group

International science team finds most massive double neutron star system with distributed volunteer computing project Einstein@Home in data from the Arecibo radio telescope

Almost 25,000 light years away, two dead stars, each more massive than our Sun, but only 20 kilometers in diameter, orbit one another in less than five hours. This unusual pair of extreme objects, known as neutron stars, was discovered by an international team of scientists – including researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy – and by volunteers from the distributed computing project Einstein@Home. Their find is the latest addition to a short list of only 14 known similar binary systems, and it also is the most massive of those. Double neutron star systems are important cosmic laboratories that enable some of the most precise tests of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. They also play an important role as potential gravitational-wave sources for the LIGO detectors.

LOFAR, the low-frequency array radio telescope, normally receives weak radio waves from the distant universe. But now and then an ultra-short, bright radio pulse is observed somewhere in between AM and FM radio frequencies. This radio blast would appear as a short cracking sound in your car radio. While usually ignored, this radio signal is actually the last SOS of an elementary particle entering the Earth atmosphere at almost the speed of light. The particles were fired off by a cosmic accelerator Millions of year ago. An international team of astronomers including a number of scientists from the German Long Wavelength consortium (GLOW) have now unraveled the radio code of these intruders to determine their nature and constrain their origin.

An international research team including astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, Germany, has discovered the first source of repeating bursts of radio waves which is located well beyond our Milky Way galaxy. Fast radio bursts, lasting just a few thousandths of a second, have puzzled scientists since they were first reported nearly a decade ago. The findings indicate that these “fast radio bursts” come from an extremely powerful object which occasionally produces multiple bursts in under a minute.

Discovery of a Fast Radio Burst reveals 'missing matter' in the Universe

An international research team including scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany used a combination of radio and optical telescopes to identify the precise location of a fast radio burst in a distant galaxy, allowing them to conduct a unique census of the Universe’s matter content.