Gravitational waves spark hunt for cosmic strings and dark matter
10 July 2023
The discovery of low-level ripples throughout the universe called the gravitational wave background has set physicists looking for exotic explanations
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Gravitational wave hunters will get an ultracool new tool in 2023
31 December 2022
We have been detecting gravitational waves since 2015, but there is still much more to learn. The Matter-wave Laser Interferometric Gravitation Antenna will use ultracold atoms to spot ripples in space-time at lower frequencies than ever before
LIGO may be able to detect alien warp drives using gravitational waves
9 December 2022
If aliens were to make spacecraft as massive as Jupiter or ones that use warp drives, we might be able to detect them using the ripples they produce in space-time
Gravitational waves could let us find tiny black holes devouring stars
15 April 2022
A primordial black hole falling into a neutron star would sink to its centre and devour it in seconds, and we might be able to detect this process using gravitational waves
How a new kind of gravitational wave will reveal the early universe
16 March 2022
With 90 detections now under our belt, gravitational waves are solving riddles about the evolution of galaxies and missing black holes – and they could soon give us a glimpse of dark matter
Strange gravitational wave echoes may let us probe dark matter
27 January 2022
When gravitational waves pass over massive objects, they should create an echo that could allow us to examine objects that we can’t otherwise see, including dark matter
Two black holes merged to form a huge one moving at incredible speeds
11 January 2022
Astronomers have long suspected that merging black holes can give the resulting larger black hole a massive boost of speed, and have finally spotted this happening
Quantum nature of gravity may be detectable with gravitational waves
30 August 2021
Perhaps the most important problem in physics is how gravity and quantum mechanics fit together, and strange fluctuations in gravitational waves could help us figure it out
Impossibly huge black holes may have come from weird ancient stars
8 June 2021
Gravitational wave observatories have spotted black holes that were too massive to be explained by our best models, and they may have formed from weird stars in the early universe
Astronomers may have found black holes that formed soon after big bang
14 May 2021
We have now detected gravitational waves from 47 pairs of black holes smashing together, and nearly a third of them may be strange primordial black holes
