Wen-Di Guo

Gravitational wave detectors work like sensitive microphones, picking up the trembling of space from distant cosmic catastrophes. When two black holes merge into one, the newborn object rings like a bell, and that ringing is a unique 'voice' of gravity.

Every pulsating object has a moment when its rhythm falters. For boson stars, hypothetical clumps of ultralight particles, that moment turns out to be the point where mass stops growing. The authors calculated the lowest radial mode (the fundamental 'breathing' tone) for a whole family of such stars, including models with self-interaction.