It is much louder than previously believed possible and its discovery will alter our understanding of the universe.
Now, the discovery of direct evidence for the gravitational wave background provides a wealth of new insight into the frequency of these types of mergers, as well as a whole host of other cosmological questions.
"It's like a choir, with all these supermassive black hole pairs chiming in at different frequencies," NANOGrav scientist and Yale University professor Chiara Mingarelli, explained in the statement. "This is the first-ever evidence for the gravitational wave background. We've opened a new window of observation on the universe."
The volume may be the result of experimental limitations, though it could also be down to louder and more abundant supermassive black holes than the ones accounted for in the researchers' models. Alternatively, something else that we do not yet understand is generating gravitational waves.How scientists measured the gravitational wave backgroundLIGO and Virgo
An experiment on Earth wouldn't be able to detect such enormous waves, as these could take decades to pass through a detection facility. Instead, the NANOGrav team closely observed pulsars for many years, which are ultra-dense remnants of large stars that died and went supernova.
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