Virgo detector in Italy.
Virgo collaboration.
New results from Italy and the US help us better estimate the position of the merging black holes that produced the gravitational waves.
Black hole collision and merger releasing gravitational waves.
New research shows that as few as ten further detections of gravitational waves will help scientists know for sure how pairs of black holes form.
A simulation of the latest binary black hole merger detected by LIGO. Blue indicates weak fields and yellow indicates strong fields.
Numerical-relativistic Simulation: S Ossokine, A Buonanno (Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics) and the Simulating eXtreme Spacetime project Scientific Visualization: T Dietrich (Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics), R Haas (NCSA)
Scientists have made a third detection of gravitational waves, again caused by the merger of two black holes. But they think there’s something different about the black holes in this case.
Artist’s conception of two merging black holes, spinning in a nonaligned fashion.
LIGO/Caltech/MIT/Sonoma State (Aurore Simonnet)
These ripples in the very fabric of the universe were hypothesized by Einstein a century ago. Now scientists have detected them for the third time in a year and a half – ushering in a new era in astrophysics.
When black holes collide, gravitational waves are created in space itself (image is a computer simulation).
The SXS (Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes) Project
Einstein called entanglement “spooky action at a distance”. But now it’s been used to design an incredibly sensitive detection method for gravitational waves.
An artist’s rendering of the Swift satellite catching a Gamma-ray Burst.
Nasa/Spectrum Astro
A burst of gamma rays in a distant part of the universe reveals the birth of another black hole.
We don’t know what the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way will look like.
Ute Kraus/wikipedia
The first ever picture of the Milky Way’s black hole is expected to be a bright crescent shape rather than a disk.
An artist’s impression of a Sun-like star close to a rapidly spinning supermassive black hole, with a mass of about 100 million times the mass of our Sun.
ESA/Hubble, ESO, M. Kornmesser
The discovery of a new black hole adds to our understanding of these celestial objects that fascinate in both fact and fiction.
Einstein’s theories are still not taught in school.
Wikimedia
Einstein’s theories of relativity underpin our understanding of the universe, yet they’re not taught in high school. How can we change that?
An illustration showing the merger of two black holes and the gravitational waves that ripple outward.
LIGO/T. Pyle
The observation of gravitational waves from a second black hole merger implies there are many more black holes in the universe than scientists had previously anticipated.
YouTube
State of the art detectors have found another signal from a pair of collapsing black holes – the consequences could be momentous.
Windy black hole.
It was a rare and brief event, but powerful telescopes helped scientists get a glimpse of a black hole letting out a wind at 3,000km per second.
All is not calm in the cosmos.
ESA/Hubble and NASA
Stargazing seems such a quiet, calm activity. But whether our eyes can see or not, those stars out there are in constant flux. Time-domain astronomy studies how cosmic objects change with time.
A new development could mean vastly increase data transfer over optical fibre cables.
Shutterstock
The design of a new chip to detect the twisted nature of light waves could pave the way for next generation of optical communication technologies.
The High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) was instrumental in determining the origin of cosmic rays.
HESS
A new study suggests that mysterious high energy cosmic rays might originate from the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.
A needle in a haystack? Pan Starrs telescope is scanning billions of galaxies to find the black holes emitting gravitational waves.
The hunt to find the source of the gravitational waves detected by LIGO on the sky is only just starting.
Don’t get too close.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
The spectacular science of quasars, no hair theorum and spaghettification.
Wes Mountain/The Conversation
It’s taken centuries for our understanding of gravity to evolve to where it is today, culminating in the discovery of gravitational waves, as predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago.
Massive bodies can send ripples through space time in the form of gravitational waves.
NASA
February 11, 2016
Keith Riles , University of Michigan ; Alan Duffy , Swinburne University of Technology ; Amanda Weltman , University of Cape Town ; Daniel Kennefick , University of Arkansas ; David Parkinson , The University of Queensland ; Maria Womack , University of South Florida ; Stephen Smartt , Queen's University Belfast ; Tamara Davis , The University of Queensland , and Tara Murphy , University of Sydney
The long awaited discovery of gravitational waves has sent ripples through the scientific world. Here top experts respond to the historic announcement.
When two black holes collide, the resulting gravitational ripples can be felt across the cosmos.
Henze, NASA
The detection of gravitational waves is the final confirmation of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, and opens up a new window into the cosmos.