Gravitational

The weak gravitational pull on a particle just half the mass of a grain of sand has been measured for the first time. This most precise measurement of its kind is a breakthrough towards the quantum realm and a potential Theory of Everything.Of the universe’s four fundamental forces – gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces – gravity is the one we’re most familiar with in everyday life, but it’s actually the only one that we can’t currently explain using the Standard Model of particle physics, our…

Orbital observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can see far back into the universe—so far, in fact, that they have revealed some of the earliest galaxies to form in the first 500 million years of our universe’s 13.8-billion-year-history. Much further back, we can see the remnant heat left over from the big bang, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, which was emitted about 400,000 years into cosmic history. But what about the period after the CMB appeared and…

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…

January 30, 20243 min readThe Laser Interferometer Space Antenna could discover gigantic ripples in spacetime from merging supermassive black holes and moreBy Elizabeth Gibney & Nature magazineAn artist’s concept showing the triangular configuration of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a mission led by the European Space Agency that could launch in the 2030s. LISA would use three laser-linked free-flying spacecraft to seek out giant gravitational waves from merging supermassive black holes and other…

Stay calm, everybody stay calm. But it’s finally happening: The European Space Agency is committing itself to the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a gravitational wave observatory that will study some of the universe’s most enigmatic phenomena.Alex Winter on the Most Important Modern Horror Movie On Thursday, LISA was formally adopted, meaning that ESA “recognizes that the mission concept and technology are sufficiently advanced,” according to an agency release, and construction on the observatory can officially…

India’s Aditya-L1 probe will arrive in a few days at a patch of space between Earth and the sun, almost a million miles away.The location is remote yet isn’t very lonely. Four active spacecraft are already in orbit near the same spot—known as the Earth-sun system’s first Lagrange point, or L1—and others are parked nearby.It’s a privileged place where the gravity of our planet, the gravity of the sun and the centrifugal force of a spacecraft’s orbit almost exactly cancel one another out, creating an “island” of comparative…

Last month, astronomers focused the Webb Space Telescope on the galaxy MRG-M0138 and found something surprising: a supernova in the ancient universe, magnified for your viewing pleasure by the gravitational lensed galaxy.First Full-Color Images From Webb Space TelescopeWhen stars die, they release a huge amount of energy, which astronomers can observe as a bright light source called a supernova. The supernova imaged by Webb is the second spotted in the lensed region. Named Encore, the supernova was “discovered…

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…

“Where did all this come from? How did it all get started?”These are the questions that Dr. Nergis Mavalvala asks about the universe. It’s not the meaning-of-life stuff in the traditional sense, but more of how everything around us came to be. These are the questions we all have, but for Dr. Mavalvala, finding the answers is her life’s work. It’s why she became a physicist.“I began to understand that these questions are mostly answered outside of our planet, outside of our solar system,” she explains. “It really lies in…