Ben Stappers: The Best Clocks in the Universe, Pulsars

Ben Stappers is a Professor of Astrophysics in the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics where he leads the Pulsars & Time Domain Astrophysics research group. His primary research interests are radio pulsars, neutron stars and rapid radio transients.

The rapidly rotating and highly magnetised neutron stars known as pulsars are believed to be some of the best clocks in the Universe. We can measure the rate at which they spin to a precision which matches the best atomic clocks on Earth. In his DotTalk, Ben Stappers demonstrated how we use pulsars to weight the moon and the planets in the solar system and also discussed recent searches for new planets.