In the very early universe, physics were weird. A process known as inflation, during which the universe went from a single infinitesimal point to everything we see today, was one such instance of those weird physics. Now, scientists from the Chinese Academy of Science have sifted through 15 years of pulsar timing data in order to put some constraints on what physics looks like.
  • btaf45@lemmy.worldOP
    3·
    1 year ago

    [More recent work has seen pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) such as NANOGrav successfully identify a specific flavor of gravitational wave known as the stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB). The SGWB is similar in concept to the cosmic microwave background—a consistent glow from the early universe that astronomers can see as a series of microwaves coming from all directions at once.]

    First time I’ve heard of this concept.

  • niktemadur@lemmy.world
    2·
    1 year ago

    Perfect timing, as just this past week I’ve been wondering about these low-frequency gravitational waves that were announced with a splash last summer, then I heard nothing, that is until now.

    It takes a while to go through the data and find specific parameters you’re looking for. This is radio astronomy, using data from antenna telescopes all over the world. For comparison in a similar type of project, it took two years to crunch the numbers from the Event Horizon Telescope and resolve a fuzzy image of the supermassive black hole in M87.