Posted on July 6, 2023 at 5:27 am by Aurélia ABISUR
By analyzing data collected over a period of more than 15 years, the team of scientists was able to discover a new form of gravitational waves. A significant advance, not least since it is very likely that they were created by supermassive black holes!
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The Discovery of New Gravitational Waves Produced by Supermassive Black Holes!
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It is a great discovery just made by scientists from the NANOGrav team! After several years of research, they have just discovered new gravitational waves. These very strong waves energy have the abilityedit Leisure time. Because of her low frequencyEverything indicates that they would have been formed by the merger supermassive black holes. And there would be millions of them scattered throughout the universe.
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A new generation of gravitational waves
Gravitational waves are a phenomenon cosmic what after the performance merger Black holes or a star explosion. This leads to a release of energy, so the tissues move under the action of waves Leisure time contracts and deforms. The discovery of these waves is not a new fact. Albert Einstein predicted their existence as early as 1916. Other indirect evidence has also been presented, such as by physicists in 1974 Russell Hulse And JosephTaylor. A discovery that earned them the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics. And in 2016, their presence was confirmed thanks to observation.
If this discovery is so exciting, it’s because it involves newly discovered gravitational waves. In contrast to short waves, which have been studied by the LIGO (USA) and Virgo (Europe) observatories for several years, this is the case with the latter low frequency. Waves of this kind appear to arise from the merging of supermassive black holes weighing between 100 and 10 billion times its mass Sun !
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Giant Gravitational Waves: Why Scientists Are So Excited https://t.co/ihEQ2RSkBX
– Nature (@Nature) July 1, 2023
To detect these new waves, the NANOVGrav team used a network of pulsar. Pulsar is the name of one neutron star. The latter switches very quickly and emits a noise radiation periodically. By measuring the temporal variations of these signals, the scientists were able to detect these new waves. This discovery, the result of analyzing data collected over almost 15 years, opens a new window in understanding our universeespecially in his creation and be extension.
“The ultimate goal is to create an even more accurate spatial map of gravitational waves.” said luke kelley, astronomer at the University of California at Berkeley and a member of NANOGrav. Scientists will continue their observations and analyzes to confirm the exact origin of these waves and to learn more about the cosmic phenomena that generate them.
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