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A massive combined ‘Tsunami’ of a gravitational wave rippling through our Universe has reached the Earth and become detectable by scientists from an international effort that included researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) at The University of Western Australia, These researchers have collaborated in a study that revealed the largest number of gravitational wave detections to date since the phenomena were first observed in 2015. An astonishing NINETY gravitation wave-fronts were detected impacting the Earth from points all over the observable universe.
Initially, these cataclysmic ripples in spacetime were thought to occur only with the collision of two black holes merging into one singularity. However, astrophysicists now theorize that several of these were created by even rarer collisions between ultra-dense neutron stars and black holes as well.
Study co-author Susan Scott, of the Australian National University Centre for Gravitational Astrophysics coined the find a ‘Tsunami’ and described its’ detection as a “major leap forward in our quest to unlock the secrets of the Universe’s evolution,” in a statement according to CNN.
“This really is a new era for gravitational wave detections, and the growing population of discoveries is revealing so much information about the life and death of stars throughout the Universe,” she said. “Looking at the masses and spins of the black holes in these binary systems indicates how these systems got together in the first place.”
When Earth Rides The Wave, They Know First
Naturally, intergalactic gravitational waves aren’t anything that you or I would feel, but now scientists are able to determine when the earth is ever so minutely rocked by one of these primordial ripples in the fabric of existence. Thanks to a release from the University of Western Australia, we learned a bit about the experience of those who know first when the waves crash.
“The newest gravitational wave detections come from the second part of the third observing run, called “O3b”, which lasted from November 2019 to March 2020. UWA Research Fellow at OzGrav Dr Carl Blair was working on one of the LIGO detectors during the observing period.
“It’s really exciting to see the improvements in detector sensitivity translate to so many new and exciting discoveries,” Dr Blair said.
There were 35 new gravitational wave detections during the period: 32 deatections were from pairs of merging black holes and three were likely to have come from the collisions involving a neutron star, he said.”
Where Dr. Blair was somewhat more clinical in his descriptions we got a bit of the ‘cooler’ aspects, naturally from a Grad Student. “Manoj Kovalam said working as a developer for SPIIR throughout O3b had been a thrilling experience.
“Our software had been running continuously for almost half a year and made significant discoveries. Running in real-time, we’re among the first few people alerted when there’s a detection. It’s really cool to witness some of the interesting and rare gravitational wave events before the whole world is made aware,” Mr Kovalam said.
That’s more like it. After all, realizing that our entire planet no matter how minuscule the effects may seem is being bobbed like a buoy by “some of the most violent and energetic processes in the universe, like supernovas, merging black holes and colliding neutron stars” from millions upon billions of light-years away and years ago really is to recycle an old phrase ‘far-out’. Surfs Up.
