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posted by mrpg on Saturday April 14 2018, @08:23AM   Printer-friendly
from the hush dept.

Deep space is not as silent as we have been led to believe. Every few minutes a pair of black holes smash into each other. These cataclysms release ripples in the fabric of spacetime known as gravitational waves. Now Monash University scientists have developed a way to listen in on these events. The gravitational waves from black hole mergers imprint a distinctive whooping sound in the data collected by gravitational-wave detectors. The new technique is expected to reveal the presence of thousands of previously hidden black holes by teasing out their faint whoops from a sea of static.

[...] "Measuring the gravitational-wave background will allow us to study populations of black holes at vast distances. Someday, the technique may enable us to see gravitational waves from the Big Bang, hidden behind gravitational waves from black holes and neutron stars," Dr Thrane said.

[...] Importantly the researchers will have access to a new $4 million supercomputer, launched last month (March) at the Swinburne University of Technology. The computer, called OzSTAR, will be used by scientists to look for gravitational waves in LIGO data.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @01:07AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @01:07AM (#667108)

    Have they tried looking in the federal budget?