Gravitational waves

LIGO has confirmed 90 gravitational wave detections so far, but physicists want to detect more, which will require making the experiment even more sensitive. And that is a challenge.  “The struggle of these detectors is that every time you try to improve them, you actually can make things worse, because they are so sensitive,” says Lisa Barsotti, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Nevertheless, Barsotti and her colleagues recently pushed past this challenge, creating a device that will allow…

The LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) mission, led by ESA (European Space Agency) with NASA contributions, will detect gravitational waves in space using three spacecraft, separated by more than a million miles, flying in a triangular formation. Lasers fired between the satellites, shown in this artist’s concept, will measure how gravitational waves alter their relative distances. Credit: AEI/MM/ExozetLISA, a collaborative mission between ESA and NASA, aims to detect gravitational waves from space, offering new…

ESA’s Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission will be the first space-based observatory dedicated to detecting ripples in the fabric of spacetime. These ripples, which we call gravitational waves, are emitted during some of the most powerful events in the Universe, such as when black holes collide. Credit: ESAESA’s approval of the LISA mission marks a significant advancement in space science, aiming to detect gravitational waves with a trio of spacecraft. Launching in 2035, it will offer new insights into cosmic…

While Interstellar popularised the idea of black holes, physicists and research labs continue to expand their research of such interstellar phenomena to further understand the origins of our universe. In December 2021, the US-based National Aeronautics Space Agency launched the imaging X-ray polarimetry explorer mission to explore the remnants of supernova explosions, the particle streams emitted by black holes and other cosmic events.  On 1 January,…

By U.S. Department of Energy December 14, 2023 Scientists have used supercomputer simulations to study gravitational waves produced by merging neutron stars, revealing a correlation between the remnant temperature and wave frequency. These findings are significant for future gravitational-wave detectors, which will differentiate between models of hot nuclear matter. Credit: SciTechDaily.com Simulations of binary neutron star mergers suggest that future detectors will distinguish between different models of hot nuclear…

Physicists have developed a novel method to investigate dark matter using gravitational wave detectors, potentially uncovering the effects of dark matter particles on neutron stars. This approach offers new insights into dark matter, extending beyond the reach of current detectors and paving the way for future discoveries with advanced gravitational wave observatories. Dark matter is fundamental to our understanding of the Universe, yet its exact nature remains a mystery. Uncovering the identity of dark matter is a…

New Delhi: The scientific world could not hide its excitement on 28 June when the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) Physics Frontiers Center, comprising more than 190 scientists from the US and Canada who use pulsars—ultra-dense remains of dead stars from supernova explosions—to search for gravitational waves, said they had found “compelling evidence" for gravitational waves that oscillate with periods of years to decades, and published the set of papers in The…

In a first, a team of scientists from India, Japan and Europe has found evidence of gravitational waves in the universe. The team included researchers from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee (IIT-R).According to the results published in two seminal papers in the Astronomy and Astrophysics journal, the team monitored data from pulsars using six of the world's most sensitive radio telescopes, including India’s largest telescope, uGMRT. Pulsar is a highly magnetised neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic…

Maura McLaughlin, co-director of NANOGrav, the research collaboration that published the results in The Astrophysical Journal Letters said that “It’s really the first time that we have evidence of just this large-scale motion of everything in the universe."  As per NASA, Gravitational waves are invisible, however, are incredibly fast. They travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second). They squeeze and stretch anything in their path as they pass by.…

A team of astrophysicists has determined through simulations that the debris shed by dying stars may be a source of gravitational waves—those ripples in spacetime predicted by Einstein over a century ago.First Full-Color Images From Webb Space TelescopeGravitational waves are predicted by the general theory of relativity; they are ripples in spacetime generated by massive accelerating objects. The waves are also produced by the interactions of such objects, like binaries of and mergers between neutron stars and black…