Pulsars - Celestial Clocks

Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars born in supernova explosions. About 2600 pulsars are now known, almost all of them lying within our Milky Way Galaxy. Like celestial lighthouses, they send out beams of radiation that we detect as pulses as the beam sweeps across the Earth. The pulse period is incredibly stable, enabling pulsars to be used for many fascinating studies, including the first detections of extra-solar planets, tests of Einstein¹s general theory of relativity and searches for gravitational waves. New and future developments including the giant FAST radio telescope in China and the Square Kilometre Array in Australia and South Africa will be described. 

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