Radio signal discovered at the center of our galaxy could put Einstein's relativity to the test

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Scientists hope to probe the nature of general relativity through a possible pulsar found in the center of the Milky Way, near a supermassive black hole.

An image showing a metal radio antenna to the left under a glowing band of the Milky Way in the night sky with a circle cutout to the right of the image showing an illustration of a black sphere surrounded by glowing gas
Illustration of the Green Bank radio telescope observing a pulsar in the center of the Milky Way galaxy. (Image credit: Danielle Futselaar/Breakthrough Listen)

Is the ultradense core of a gigantic star lurking in the center of the Milky Way?

Scientists think they may have found just that: the signal of a pulsar, a rapidly rotating ancient star core, in the heart of our galaxy. The rare discovery could be used to test the predictions of Einstein's general relativity.

The researchers published their findings Monday (Feb. 9) in The Astrophysical Journal. The work was led by Karen Perez, a postdoctoral researcher at the SETI Institute who was a doctoral student at Columbia University at the time of the research.

"We're looking forward to what follow-up observations might reveal about this pulsar candidate," Perez said in a statement. In particular, she added, the researchers hope to use the pulsar to probe general relativity.

Testing the rules of the universe

General relativity, first proposed by Albert Einstein, proposes that gravity is not a force in nature but a property of how space-time curves.

A nearby pulsar in the Milky Way would let researchers learn about "precision measurements of the space-time around a supermassive black hole," the statement noted. That's because pulsars rotate so rapidly that they are sensitive to the subtle gravitational pulls of massive neighboring objects, like other stars.

The pulsar's rotation could then, in theory, produce "anomalies" in the pulses of light that it sends toward Earth, said study co-author Slavko Bogdanov, a research scientist at the Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory.

"In addition, when the pulses travel near a very massive object, they may be deflected and experience time delays due to the warping of space-time, as predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity," Bogdanov added.

Researchers detected the suspected pulsar through Breakthrough Listen, a scientific research program that aims to find signals of civilizations beyond Earth. The new findings came from the Breakthrough Listen Galactic Center Survey, which, as the name suggests, hunted for signals coming from the center of the Milky Way.

Breakthrough Listen released all of the data publicly, the researchers added, "allowing researchers worldwide to pursue independent analyses and complementary science cases."

Further research is needed to confirm whether the signal really was a pulsar, or if it came from some other exotic radio source.

Article Sources

Source: Perez, K. I., Gajjar, V., Bogdanov, S., Halpern, J. P., Demorest, P. B., Croft, S., Lebofsky, M., MacMahon, D. H. E., & Siemion, A. P. V. (2026). On the Deepest Search for Galactic Center Pulsars and an Examination of an Intriguing Millisecond Pulsar Candidate. The Astrophysical Journal, 998(1), 147. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ae336c

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Elizabeth Howell
Elizabeth Howell
Live Science Contributor

Elizabeth Howell was staff reporter at Space.com between 2022 and 2024 and a regular contributor to Live Science and Space.com between 2012 and 2022. Elizabeth's reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House, speaking several times with the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest book, "Why Am I Taller?" (ECW Press, 2022) is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams.

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