Scientists are using a network of spinning stars to create a telescope the size of a galaxy to solve the universe's biggest mysteries.
arXiv · March 13, 2026 · 2603.12168
Why it matters
There is a major conflict in physics called the 'Hubble tension' regarding how fast the universe is expanding. By precisely timing the pulses of dead stars (pulsars) across the sky, astronomers believe they can create a 'standard siren' accurate enough to finally settle the debate.
From the abstract
The sky localisation of about $10$ to $100~\text{deg}^2$, which is expected to be achieved in all-sky blind searches for gravitational waves from supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) with Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) experiments, has long been posed as a prohibitive factor in utilising these sources as standard sirens for precision cosmology. We propose a solution to this problem, which makes use of targeted searches rather than all-sky blind searches for SMBHBs. Using our simulated data infor