Background space noise can reveal hidden black holes

Background space noise can reveal hidden black holes

Visualization of a supercomputer simulation of the confluence of black holes sending gravitational waves

The space is not as quiet as it seems to us. Every few minutes a pair of black holes bump into each other. These cataclysms lead to the release of ripples in the tissue of space-time - gravitational waves. Scientists from Monash University were able to come up with a way to “wiretap” these events. It turns out that such gravitational waves create special sound collected by gravitational wave detectors. Expect that new technologies will be able to find thousands of previously hidden black holes.

Last year, LIGO made a breakthrough in the study of gravitational waves. In 2015, for the first time, we managed to see the ripples in the fabric of space created by the collision of two black holes in a distant universe. This helped confirm the general theory of relativity of Albert Einstein (1915).

Now there are 6 confirmed gravitational wave events found by LIGO and Virgo. But scientists note that more than 100,000 events occur every year and are not recorded because they are too weak. Therefore, we decided to invent a new and more sensitive method for searching for the background of a gravitational wave. Measuring the gravitational-wave background allows us to study populations of black holes at a great distance. A powerful enough technique once helps to see the gravitational waves from the Big Bang event.

Scientists have created a computer model of weak signals of a black hole, collecting mass, until they were convinced in modeling the black hole fusion signal. Chances are good that the method will detect when applied to real data. Now researchers will have access to the $ 4 million OzSTAR supercomputer launched in March at Swinburne University of Technology to search for gravitational waves in LIGO data.

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