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How Gravitational Waves Could Let Us See the First Moments After the Big Bang

Cosmology has had several ground-breaking discoveries over the last 100+ years since Einstein developed his theory of relativity. Two of the most prominent were the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in 1968 and the confirmation of gravitational waves in 2015. Each utilized different tools, but both lent credence to the Big Bang Theory, …

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New Limits on Gravitational Waves From the Big Bang

[/caption] The only way to know what the Universe was like at the moment of the Big Bang requires analysis of gravitational waves created when the Universe began. Scientists working with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) say their initial investigations of these gravitiation waves have turned up nothing. But that’s a good thing. Not …

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How Did Supermassive Black Holes Get So Big, So Early? They Might Have Had a Head Start

Supermassive Black Holes (SMBHs) can have billions of solar masses, and observational evidence suggests that all large galaxies have one at their centres. However, the JWST has revealed a foundational cosmic mystery. The powerful space telescope, with its ability to observe ancient galaxies in the first billion years after the Big Bang, has shown us …

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Future Gravitational Wave Observatories Could See the Earliest Black Hole Mergers in the Universe

In February 2016, scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) confirmed they made the first-ever detection of gravitational waves (GWs). These events occur when massive objects like neutron stars and black holes merge, sending ripples through spacetime that can be detected millions (and even billions) of light-years away. Since the first event, more than …

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Gravitational Wave Observatories Could Detect Primordial Black Holes Speeding Through the Solar System

Cosmologists have long hypothesized that the conditions of the early universe could have caused the formation of black holes not long after the Big Bang. These ‘primordial black holes’ have a much wider mass range than those that formed in the later universe from the death of stars, with some even condensed to the width …

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Do Neutron Stars Have Mountains? Gravitational Wave Observatories Could Detect Them

Neutron stars are the incredibly dense remnants from massive star supernovae. Although they’re pulled into dense spheres by their intense gravity, it’s believed that neutron stars could have slight deformations, known as “mountains,” caused by crustal strains and interactions with magnetic fields. If the mountains are there, merging neutron stars should slightly distort the signal received by gravitational wave observatories.