New Sensors Open Low Frequencies for Gravitational Waves express
Even Einstein predicted gravitational waves — a trembling of the very fabric of spacetime. Today they are captured by gigantic installations like LIGO, created thanks to Rainer Weiss and Kip Thorne. But all of them are a bit deaf to low notes: at frequencies below 20 oscillations per second, earthly shaking (from surf, trains, even walking people) drowns out the signal, like the noise of an orchestra muffling a quiet whisper.
The solution is a system that dampens the tremor, like active noise-canceling headphones, suppressing interference down to one-hundredth of an oscillation per second (10 millihertz). With motion sensors five times more accurate than usual, this gives a tenfold gain at a frequency of 10 hertz. Now we can hear the bass chords of the Universe — mergers of black holes of intermediate mass, thousands of times heavier than the Sun.
This dramatic leap will not only triple the search radius (volume — almost 30 times), but also possibly show whether supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies grow from such "seeds".
Low-frequency gravitational waves are the only messenger from black holes with masses from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of suns; these "golden means" have hidden from all telescopes.
Like in 'Interstellar': the instruments sensed how space trembled from distant black holes. Now we hear that tremor with unimaginable clarity.