Tracking gravitational waves—invisible ripples in space-time from intense astronomical events—pushes the limits of what astronomers must do to reduce unwanted noise. Scientists have been getting increasingly better at doing just that, but new research warns that something rather unexpected might be getting in the way: daylight savings time. In a preprint titled “Can LIGO Detect […]
Astronomers Detect a Black Hole Merger That’s So Massive It Shouldn’t Exist
Gravitational waves—ripples in space-time caused by violent cosmic events—travel at the speed of light in every direction, eventually fading out like ripples in water. But some events are so destructive and extreme that they create disturbances in spacetime more like powerful waves than small ripples, with enough energy to reach our own detectors here on […]
LISA: What the Revolutionary Gravitational Wave Observatory Will Actually See
LISA, a $1.6 billion gravitational wave observatory set to launch next decade, will revolutionize the way we see gravitational waves—the infinitesimal perturbations of spacetime first predicted over a century ago and only detected eight years ago. In the fall, we published a deep-dive into LISA’s design and the engineering hurdles that must be overcome to […]