Gravitational Waves

Vampire Stars Get Help from a Third Star to Feed

Some stars are stuck in bad binary relationships. A massive primary star feeds on its smaller companion, sucking gas from…

1 year ago

Vera Rubin Will Find Binary Supermassive Black Holes. Here’s How.

When galaxies merge, we expect them to produce binary black holes (BBHs.) BBHs orbit one another closely, and when they…

1 year ago

New Telescopes to Study the Aftermath of the Big Bang

The NSF just awarded researchers at UChicago to start developing the CMB-S4 experiment, which will map the earliest moments of…

1 year ago

A Black Hole Switched On in the Blink of an Eye

A new study describes how astronomers discovered a supermassive black hole that suddenly "switched on" and became

2 years ago

Gravitational Waves Can Be Gravitationally Lensed, and This Could Provide Another Way to Measure the Expansion of the Universe

Astronomers can never have enough ways to measure the expansion in the Universe, from nearby stars to distant quasars. A…

2 years ago

Next Generation Gravitational Wave Detectors Could Pin Down Dark Matter

Gravitational astronomy is a relatively new discipline that has opened many doors for astronomers to understand how the huge and…

2 years ago

Early Black Holes Were Bigger Than We Thought

Every large galaxy in the nearby universe contains a supermassive black hole at its core. The mass of those black…

2 years ago

Astronomers Have Never Detected Merging Supermassive Black Holes. That Might Be About to Change

A new study suggests that pulsars could act as natural gravitational wave sensors, setting limits on supermassive black hole mergers…

2 years ago

We Might Soon Detect the Gravitational Waves from Dying Stars

Researchers have discovered an exciting new source of gravitational waves. They are the remnants left over from a supernova explosion,…

2 years ago

When Black Holes Merge, They'll Ring Like a Bell

How a merged black hole rings as it settles into a stable form holds clues to a better understanding of…

2 years ago