Gravitational Waves
Simulating the Last Moments Before Neutron Stars Merge
When stars reach the end of their life cycle, they shed their outer layers in a supernova. What is left…
More Evidence for the Gravitational Wave Background of the Universe
The gravitational wave background was first detected in 2016. It was announced following the release of the first data set…
Gravitational Lenses Could Pin Down Black Hole Mergers with Unprecedented Accuracy
Gravitational wave astronomy has been one of the hottest new types of astronomy ever since the LIGO consortium officially detected…
Astronomers Will Get Gravitational Wave Alerts Within 30 Seconds
Any event in the cosmos generates gravitational waves, the bigger the event, the more disturbance. Events where black holes and…
Here’s Why We Should Put a Gravitational Wave Observatory on the Moon
Scientists detected the first long-predicted gravitational wave in 2015, and since then, researchers have been hungering for better detectors. But…
Gravitational Waves Could Show us the First Minute of the Universe
Astronomers routinely explore the universe using different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum from the familiar visible light to radio waves…
The Echoes From Inflation Could Still Be Shaking the Cosmos Today
In the very early universe, physics was weird. A process known as "inflation," where best we understand the universe went…
Astronomers are Hoping to Detect Gravitational Waves Coming from Supernova 1987A
A supernova explosion is a cataclysmic explosion that marks the violent end of a massive star’s life. During the event,…
Next Generation Gravitational Wave Observatories Could Detect 100-600 Solar Mass Black Hole Mergers
Humans are born wonderers. We're always wondering about the next valley over, the next horizon, what we'll understand next about…
A Kilonova Simulated in 3D
In 2017, astronomers detected gravitational waves from colliding neutron stars for the first time: a kilonova. Enormous amounts of heavy…