Although there is strong circumstantial evidence for their existence, they have not yet been directly detected.
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Today’s results don’t throw this part of Einstein’s theory out the window.
The Parkes telescope was also used as a model for the large antennas that make up NASA’s Deep Space Tracking Network (DSN).
Einstein found that gravitational waves are responsible for influencing the distance between particles traveling through space.
When galaxies collide, the gargantuan black holes in their cores sidle up to one another.
“We heard nothing. Not even a whimper”, said Dr. Ryan Shannon at CSIRO.
Einstein’s theory of relativity predicts that the merging of two supermassive black holes would result in gravitational waves.
The study’s findings were particularly puzzling because almost all of the theoretical explanations of the dynamics of the universe account for these gravitational waves. It may go on to reveal that other provisions in his theories wouldn’t hold up to similar scrutiny, but as of now the absence of gravitational waves in black holes remains the most pressing mystery.
So for 11 years, Shannon and his colleagues – with the help of radio telescopes – monitored pulsar waves as they passed Earth, looking for anomalies.
For the study, scientists studied the set of small stars or pulsar for eleven years and it is thought to be a good enough time to detect gravitational waves. This would create a tiny change in the distance between the pulsar and Earth according to CSIRO.
It was thought that gravitational waves emerging from black hole mergers would be detected in a search of the cosmos.
“But we heard nothing”.
‘It seems to be all quiet on the cosmic front – at least for the kind of waves we are looking for’. But, scientists believe that the black holes of the galaxies would have merged very fast spending little time spiraling together and generating gravitational waves, which they missed to recognize. According to researcher Paul Lasky from Monash University, the gas surrounding the black holes could create friction, dispersing the energy from the gravitational waves out into space.
Einstein’s theory states that a gravitational wave (illustrated) passing between Earth and a millisecond pulsar would squeeze and stretch space, changing the distance between them by about 10 metres.
“This is probably the most comprehensive, high precision science that’s ever been undertaken in this field of astronomy”, Dr. Shannon said.
Astronomers will also gain an advantage with the highly sensitive Square Kilometre Array telescope, set to start construction in 2018. The findings, or lack thereof, have no implications for the gravitational wave detectors based on the Earth’s surface, like the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, which launched a new round of observations just last week.
“Ground-based detectors are looking for higher-frequency gravitational waves generated by other sources, such as coalescing neutron stars”, said Dr Vikram Ravi, a member of the research team from Swinburne University (now at Caltech, in Pasadena, California).
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For astrophysicists, gravitational waves are noteworthy because they believe it carries data allowing them to look back into the very early stages of the universe.
