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Much ado about Geminga

  • IV. Astrophysics and Cosmology
  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Gravitation, Geometry and Relativistic Physics

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Physics ((LNP,volume 212))

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Abstract

On October 11th 1983, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) announced that gravitational radiation had been observed. The origin of this claim goes back almost ten years. In 1976 an oscillation of the Sun at 160 minutes was observed and has resisted since then all theoretical explanations. At about the same time a powerful, nearby but mysterious gamma- ray source, “Geminga”, was discovered. Could these facts be two pieces of the same puzzle? Could the solar oscillation be excited by gravitational waves emitted by Geminga? That was the idea of P.Delache (Observatoire de Nice), J.Paul (CEA, Saclay), G.Bignami (Milano) and G.Isaak (Birmingham). They then searched for a 160 min periodicity in the Geminga gamma data and claimed they found one. “Thus”, as the CNRS communique puts it, “for the first time a causal relationship between an emitter and a receptor comes to confirm the reality of gravitational waves predicted by Einstein's theory of General Relativity”.

As one might suspect this announcement started a lively controversy, a first aspect of which concerned the possibility of a coupling between the Sun and Geminga via gravitational radiation. An answer was quickly given. When considering standard models of the Sun such a coupling is impossible. A second problem concerned the significance of the result, that is of the 160 min periodicity in the Geminga data. This issue in May 1984 seemed still unclear.

In the following we review the main aspects of this controversy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire de Physique Théorique, Institut H.Poincaré, 11 rue P.M.Curie, 75231, Paris

    Nathalie Deruelle

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  1. Nathalie Deruelle
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© 1984 Springer-Verlag

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Deruelle, N. (1984). Much ado about Geminga. In: Gravitation, Geometry and Relativistic Physics. Lecture Notes in Physics, vol 212. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0012597

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0012597

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-13881-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-39081-7

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