Black-hole boffins close in on gravity waves

While the world looks for ways to directly observe gravity waves, boffins at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) say they’ve used information about the Einsteinian prediction to examine huge black holes.

In what they call a “new chapter in astronomy”, post-doctoral CSIRO fellow Dr Ryan Shannon and PhD student Vikram Ravi believe they’ve worked out the likely – and low – rate of background gravitational waves in the universe.

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> The timing of pulsar signals is extremely precise, the researchers say, but as a gravitational wave passes the pulsar’s region, it would swell or shrink distances in that region, changing the timing of the pulse from Earth’s point of view. … We haven’t yet detected gravitational waves outright, but we’re now into the right ballpark to do so

That’s a very good point. I hadn’t heard about that technique before but it should work.

On the topic of Australia and gravity waves, do you know anything about whether AIGO, the Australian International Gravitational Observatory in Western Australia, has got the funding to start construction?

mollwollfumble said:

> The timing of pulsar signals is extremely precise, the researchers say, but as a gravitational wave passes the pulsar’s region, it would swell or shrink distances in that region, changing the timing of the pulse from Earth’s point of view. … We haven’t yet detected gravitational waves outright, but we’re now into the right ballpark to do so

That’s a very good point. I hadn’t heard about that technique before but it should work.

On the topic of Australia and gravity waves, do you know anything about whether AIGO, the Australian International Gravitational Observatory in Western Australia, has got the funding to start construction?

Seems like stage 2 never got the go ahead.