Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory physicists Deepen Garg and Ilya Dodin say they can better understand the state of the cosmos shortly after the Big Bang by learning how gravitational waves flow through planets and the gas between the galaxies.
Computer simulation of neutron stars merging to form a black hole, with their accretion disks interacting to produce electromagnetic waves. Image credit: L. Rezolla, AEI / M. Koppitz, AEI & Zuse-Institut Berlin.
Gravitational waves, first predicted by Albert Einstein in 1916 as a consequence of his theory of relativity, are disturbances in space-time caused by the movement of very dense objects.
They travel at the speed of light and were first detected in 2015 by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) through detectors in Washington State and Louisiana.
“We can’t see the early Universe directly, but maybe we can see it indirectly if we look at how gravitational waves from that time have affected matter and radiation that we can observe today,” Garg said