Russell Alan Hulse facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Russell Alan Hulse
|
|
|---|---|
.jpg)
Hulse at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
|
|
| Born | November 28, 1950 New York City, U.S.
|
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Cooper Union (BS) UMass Amherst (PhD) |
| Awards | Nobel Prize in Physics (1993) |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | UT Dallas Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory NRAO |
| Doctoral advisor | Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr. |
Russell Alan Hulse is an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics. He shared this important award with his professor, Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr.. They received the prize for finding a new kind of pulsar, which is like a cosmic lighthouse. This discovery helped scientists learn more about gravity.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Russell Hulse was born in New York City on November 28, 1950. He went to the Bronx High School of Science, which is a special school for students interested in science. Later, he studied at the Cooper Union and then earned his PhD in physics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1975.
Discovering Binary Pulsars
While Hulse was working on his PhD, he spent time at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in 1974. This observatory had a huge radio telescope. There, he worked with his professor, Joseph Taylor, to search for pulsars. Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars that send out beams of radio waves, like a lighthouse beam.
During their search, Hulse and Taylor made an amazing discovery. They found the very first binary pulsar, named PSR B1913+16. This was special because it wasn't just one pulsar, but two super-dense objects orbiting each other. One was a pulsar, and the other was a companion star that couldn't be seen.
Testing Gravity with Pulsars
The discovery of this binary pulsar was a big deal for science. The pulses from the pulsar were incredibly regular. By carefully watching these pulses, Hulse, Taylor, and other scientists could study how the two massive objects moved around each other.
They used this binary pulsar to test Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. This theory explains how gravity works. The scientists found that the two stars in the binary pulsar were slowly getting closer together. This was happening because they were losing energy by sending out gravitational radiation, also known as gravitational waves. Einstein's theory had predicted these waves, but this was the first strong proof that they really existed.
In 1979, researchers announced that their measurements showed small changes in the pulsar's orbit. This was the first real evidence that the system of these two moving stars was indeed giving off gravitational waves.
Nobel Prize and Later Work
In 1993, Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. They received this high honor for their groundbreaking discovery of the first binary pulsar and for showing that gravitational waves exist.
After earning his PhD, Hulse continued his research at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. He then moved to Princeton, where he worked for many years at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.
Russell Hulse has also been very involved in science education. He joined the University of Texas at Dallas in 2003 as a visiting professor. There, he taught physics and worked to improve science and mathematics education. In 2004, he became the founding director of the UT Dallas Science and Engineering Education Center (SEEC), helping to inspire young people in science and engineering.
See also
In Spanish: Russell Hulse para niños
