Calculating how electromagnetic waves propagate in a plasma is almost part of everyday life for physicists. Some of them today came up with the idea of applying these methods to the study of gravitational waves. With the hope of finally having access to the beginning of time.
gravitational waves. They are strange ripples in the curvature of space-time. The stuff of our universe. Albert Einstein predicted their existence in 1916. But it took 100 years for it to be confirmed. And today, researchers at Princeton University (USA) are betting on these strange waves in hopes of glimpsing the dawn of time. More specifically, the ways in which they might affect the matter and the radiations that astronomers observe today.
Because they have developed formulas that could theoretically lead to gravitational waves revealing hidden properties of bodies navigating our universe. Indeed, when the waves penetrate matter, they produce light whose properties depend on the density of the matter. Analysis of this light could thus give access to the properties of stars millions of light-years away. And even information from the time of the Big Bang.
Go back to the big bang thanks to the experience of nuclear fusion
How did the researchers go about it? Based on work on nuclear fusion. Yes, the one that powers our sun and the stars. Also the one that we hope will bring us the energy we will need in the future.
Scientists studying nuclear fusion have for some time been able to calculate how electromagnetic waves propagate through plasma. Understand the soup of electrons and atomic nuclei that power the donut-shaped fusion devices physicists call tokamaks. Now it turns out that this process is unmistakably similar to the movement of gravitational waves through matter. It only remains to use the formulas developed by Princeton University researchers to analyze real data. And see what becomes of it…