Cosmic Clocks Keep Time in the Search for Gravitational Waves

The clocks in this case are pulsars — objects in the sky that appear to blink rapidly, such as strobe lights. A group of scientists spread out around the world are keeping a careful watch on a handful of pulsars to try to detect those ripples in the fabric of reality, also known as gravitational waves. In February, a U.S.-based experiment known as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) made history when it announced the first-ever direct detection of gravitational w