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
When supermassive black holes merge, they create a low thrum of gravitational waves that permeates the universe, and we may have just spotted it for the first time