binaries tagged posts

Visualization of the gravitational wave emission from a pair of orbiting compact objects. Credit: NASA

Next-generation gravitational wave detector in space will complement LIGO on Earth. The historic first detection of gravitational waves from colliding black holes far outside our galaxy opened a new window to understanding the universe. A string of detections – 4 more binary black holes and a pair of neutron stars – soon followed the Sept. 14, 2015, observation. Now, another detector is being built. LISA is expected to be in space in 2034, and it will be sensitive to gravitational waves of a lower frequency than those detected by the Earth-bound Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).

A new Northwestern University study predicts dozens of binaries (pairs of orbiting co...

Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre of our own galaxy. Credit: NASA/CXC/MIT/F. Baganoff et al.

Gravitational waves may be forged in the heart of the galaxy, says a new study led by PhD student Joseph Fernandez at Liverpool John Moores University. He sets out the work in a presentation on 3rd April at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science in Liverpool. Gravitational waves (GWs) are small ripples in space-time that spread throughout the universe.

When there is a change in air pressure on Earth, this change moves outwards in the form of sound waves. Analogously, when pairs of compact objects – like black holes (BHs) or neutron stars (NSs) – form binaries and rotate around one another, the gravitational field around them changes, producing GWs that also move outwards.

This ...

A team of scientists has discovered a highly unusual planetary system comprised of a sun-like star, a dwarf star, and an enormous planet “dancing” in between. The dwarf star and the planet have been gravitationally influencing each other for millions of years. Specifically, the planet’s eccentricity (the amount it deviates from being perfectly circular) and orbital inclination, meaning its angle relative to the equatorial plane of the primary star, have been oscillating back and forth in a process known as Kozai oscillations — and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Credit: Timothy Rodigas

A team of scientists has discovered a highly unusual planetary system comprised of a sun-like star, a dwarf star, and an enormous planet sandwiched in between...