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The clock-like precision of pulsar signals allows us to use these rapidly-rotating, radio-emitting compact objects as superb laboratories in space: we can employ them collectively as probes of the magnetised interstellar medium of our Galaxy, or as beacons in a space-time distorted by long gravitational waves such as those emitted by supermassive black-hole binaries. When we find them orbiting around compact companion stars - potentially also around the central black hole of our own Milky Way - we can exploit them to precisely test relativistic gravity in extreme environments. When found in Globular Clusters - breeding grounds of large number of exotic pulsar binaries - they can be used to probe the clusters themselves. The most massive or fastest spinning pulsars, finally, can also be used to put limits on the nature of nuclear matter, constraining its equation of state.
The imminent advent of the SKA telescopes, with their large instantaneous sensitivity, wide frequency coverage and flexible observation modes, will immensely benefit (pulsar) science and will allow us to make great progress in all these science cases, and many more, in particular bringing us in the era of multi-messenger gravitational wave astronomy in the nano-hertz regime.
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