Dead stars reveal the universe's background 'hum' of gravitational waves - The Weather Network

The black wave-like curve plotted here depicts what the variations in timing from pulsars should look like, based on theory. The blue dots (with error bars) depict the actual data collected by NANOGrav, which very closely matches the shape of the theoretical variations. Credit: Gabriella Agazie et al 2023/Astrophysical Journal Letters/NANOGrav Collaboration

"This is the first evidence for gravitational waves at very low frequencies," Dr. Stephen Taylor from Vanderbilt University, who co-led the research with Dr. Vigeland, said in the NANOgrav press release. "After years of work, NANOGrav is opening an entirely new window on the gravitational-wave universe."

An exciting result

Although the group still needs to go through all the data in order to positively identify the sources of these low-frequency gravitational waves, the prospects of what they might find have scientists fairly excited.

As the researchers have pointed out, one potential source is merging supermassive black holes.

As far as we know, at the core of each galaxy is a black hole millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun. Telescopes have captured views of galaxies merging, and galaxies that are in the aftermath of a merger. Thus, the supermassive black holes of these merging galaxies must also merge together.

This artist's conception drawing shows an array of pulsars being affected by gravitational ripples produced by a supermassive black hole binary in a distant galaxy. Credit: Aurore Simonnet/NANOGrav Collaboration

The process would happen very slowly, over the course of millions of years. However, the timing and scale of such a merger could produce these low-frequency space-time ripples with wavelengths lightyears long.

"We think these systems of black holes exist everywhere in the early universe. If we can get a very precise measurements of the gravitational waves, we can get a better idea of how many of these pairs there are, and how they behave," Dr. Ingrid Stairs, co-founder of NANOgrav and professor of physics and astronomy at UBC, said in the press release. "This in turn could give us more information about some of the processes in the early universe such as galaxy formation."

(Thumbnail courtesy Olena Shmahalo/NANOgrav Collaboration)

Watch below: Colossal black hole collision produced record-breaking merger

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2023-06-29 20:40:00Z
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