page_title: American Astronomical Society 215th meeting
section_title: Gravitational wave detection
hierarchical_section_title: American Astronomical Society 215th meeting / Gravitational wave detection
caption_attribution_description: English: Nature's Most Precise Clocks May Make "Galactic GPS" Possible. Radio searches netted 17 new millisecond pulsars by examining the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope's list of unidentified sources. Colored circles indicate the positions of the new pulsars on the Fermi one-year all-sky map.
context_page_description: The 215th meeting of the American Astronomical Society took place in Washington, D.C., Jan. 3 to Jan. 7, 2010. It is one of the largest astronomy meetings ever to take place as 3,500 astronomers and researchers were expected to attend and give more than 2,200 scientific presentations. The meeting was actually billed as the "largest Astronomy meeting in the universe". An array of discoveries were announced, along with new views of the universe that we inhabit; such as quiet planets like Earth - where life could develop are probably plentiful, even though an abundance of cosmic hurdles exist - such as experienced by our own planet in the past.
context_section_description: In a span of three months seventeen pulsars - millisecond pulsars - were discovered in the Milky Way galaxy. Unknown high-energy sources detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope revealed the existence and location of the pulsars. This is an accelerated pace for discovering such objects, which could be used as a "galactic GPS" to detect gravitational waves passing near Earth. Although the pulsars are relatively old they have not slowed because, these millisecond pulsars have been kept rapidly rotating and renewed with material by accretion of matter from a companion star. The combined total of 60 known millisecond pulsars creates an all-sky array. Precise monitoring of timing changes, utilizing this array,  may allow the first direct detection of gravitational waves.
caption: Map of seventeen newly discovered millisecond pulsars in the Milky Way galaxy. Milky way is in the background and the pulsars are circled. Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration
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