Almost a hundred years after Einstein formulated his theory of general relativity (GR), efforts in testing GR and its concepts are still being made by many colleagues around the world, using many different approaches. To date GR has passed all experimental and observational tests with flying colours, but in light of recent progress in observational cosmology in particular, the question of whether alternative theories of gravity need to be considered is as topical as ever.
Many experiments are designed to achieve ever more stringent tests by either increasing the precision of the tests or by testing different, new aspects. Some of the most stringent tests are obtained by satellite experiments in the solar system, providing exciting limits on the validity of GR and alternative theories of gravity like tensor-scalar theories. However, solar-system experiments are made in the gravitational weak-field regime, while deviations from GR may appear only in strong gravitational fields. It happens that nature provides us with an almost perfect laboratory to test the strong-field regime using binary radio pulsars.
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Kramer, M. (2009). The Double Pulsar: A Unique Lab for Relativistic Plasma Physics and Tests of General Relativity. In: Becker, W. (eds) Neutron Stars and Pulsars. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 357. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-76965-1_5
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