Cosmic Ringtones in Pulsar Data?
January 28, 2021•
Physics 14, 15
A pulsar survey has detected a potential signal from low-frequency gravitational waves, which theorists are eager to explain.
Tonia Klein/NANOGrav By monitoring the radio flashes from distant pulsars, astronomers have spotted a signal that could be the result of a background of gravitational waves.
Tonia Klein/NANOGrav By monitoring the radio flashes from distant pulsars, astronomers have spotted a signal that could be the result of a background of gravitational waves.×
Imagine a gravitational-wave detector stretching over a sizeable chunk of our Galaxy. That, in a nutshell, is the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), which monitors distances in our cosmic neighborhood using a network of clock-like stars, called pulsars. In late 2020, the NANOGrav team reported seeing fluctuations in the timing of pulsar ticks, which could be evidence of gravitational waves at nan