Gravitational

If you have a sibling, disagreements and quarrels are a given. And it turns out, things are not so different even among galaxies. And now, we have proof thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope that has managed to capture a trio of galaxies engaged in a tug-of-war — of sorts. But what are they fighting for? Well, the three galaxies in question were squabbling for gravity.  The image captured by the Hubble telescope was shared by NASA on its official website on July 30 and features the “dramatic triplet of galaxies”.The image…

Dark matter fluctuations in the lens system MG J0414+0534. The whitish blue color represents the gravitationally lensed images observed by ALMA. The calculated distribution of dark matter is shown in orange; brighter regions indicate higher concentrations of dark matter and dark orange regions indicate lower concentrations. Credit: ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), K. T. Inoue et al.A team of researchers has used the gravitational lensing of the MG J0414+0534 system, observed with ALMA, to map dark matter distribution in unprecedented…

As a jet escapes from a collapsed star, it punches into a cocoon of stellar debris. Credit: Ore Gottlieb/CIERA/Northwestern UniversitySo far, gravitational waves have been only detected by astrophysicists from binary systems – the fusion of either two black holes, two neutron stars, or one of each. In theory, it should be possible to detect gravitational waves emanating from a solitary, non-binary source, but such elusive signals have yet to be discovered.Researchers from Northwestern University now propose that these…

Researchers have revealed that the observation of gravitational waves from merging black holes may provide new insights into the nature of dark matter, according to findings presented at the 2023 National Astronomy Meeting. The international team used computer simulations to study the generation of gravitational wave signals in simulated universes with different types of dark matter. They propose that counting black-hole merger events detected by next-generation observatories could indicate whether dark matter interacts…

In this artist’s interpretation, a pair of supermassive black holes (top left) emits gravitational waves that ripple through the fabric of space-time. Those gravitational waves compress and stretch the paths of radio waves emitted by pulsars (white). By carefully measuring the radio waves, a team of scientists recently made the first detection of the universe’s gravitational wave background. Credit: Aurore Simonnet for the NANOGrav CollaborationRadio telescope observations of <span class="glossaryLink"…

FAST helps find key evidence for the existence of nanohertz gravitational waves with its high sensitivity. Credit: Image by NAOC of CASThe Chinese Pulsar Timing Array (CPTA) collaboration has identified evidence of nanohertz <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>gravitational waves</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>Gravitational waves are distortions or ripples in the fabric of space and time. They were first detected in…

Following 15 years of observing pulsars, the NANOGrav collaboration has detected gravitational waves stronger than ever before, likely produced by supermassive black hole pairs. This groundbreaking discovery presents the first evidence for the gravitational wave background, which is surprisingly louder than anticipated, possibly pointing to an abundance of supermassive black holes or alternative gravitational wave sources.After 15 years of carefully observing stars called pulsars throughout our galaxy, the NANOGrav…

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.…

Billings: This is Cosmos, Quickly. I am Lee Billings.  Gravitational waves--ripples in the fabric of space time first predicted by Einstein more than a century ago are one of astronomy's hottest topics ever since their first direct detection in 2015. Most gravitational waves in astronomers catalogs have come from pairs of colliding middleweight black holes. Other sources should exist, however, chief among them mergers of supermassive black holes weighing millions to billions of suns. But these giant collisions make…