No Pulsar Timing Noise from Brownian Motion of the Sun

2024/09/21 by James M. Cline, Cline, James M. · 2 voices
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Computational Physics and Python Applications #Scientific Research and Discoveries #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2409.13692

Abstract

It was recently claimed (arXiv:2405.05410 [gr-qc]) that evidence for a stochastic gravitational wave background observed by pulsar timing arrays can be attributed instead to random perturbations of the Sun's motion by transiting asteroids. I show that that this would lead to a large dipole component accompanying a much smaller quadrupolar perturbation of pulsar timing signals, which would not be confused with a gravitational wave signal. Such an anomalous dipole would have been detected and identified as a spurious background by the PTA collaborations, if it existed.

Discussions

• 🤭 According to this new pre-print, there is no pulsar timing noise for Brownian motion of the Sun caused by the asteroids. arxiv.org/abs/2409.13692 #RadioAstronomy #Pulsars [bsky, 27 points, 2 comments]
• A nice refutation of Avi Loeb's (incorrect!) claims about asteroids, stochastic noise and GWB signals in PTA data: arxiv.org/abs/2409.13692 [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]

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