Gravitational waves detected in cosmic breakthrough
Researchers involved from 4 Texas schools
The announcement Thursday that scientists had detected gravitational waves — actual ripples in the fabric of space-time — rocked the scientific com- munity about as hard as the two black holes that crashed together over 1.3 billion years ago and created the faint vibrations recently detected at labs in Washington and Louisiana.
The discovery, which promises to give scientists a whole new way of looking at the universe, will inevitably have a ripple ef- fect of its own on scientific research in the fields of astronomy and physics in Houston and beyond.
Not only do gravitational waves hold clues to the inner workings of black holes and neutron stars, but their detection could also bring in new streams of funding, support new fields of scientific pursuits
and change the way scientists tackle the big mysteries of the universe.
“This just makes my day,” said Matthew Baring, a professor at Rice University who studies black holes, pulsars and neutrons. “We have been waiting for this for so long.”
Indeed, the search for gravitational waves kicked off not long after Albert Einstein proposed his theory of general relativity 100 years ago. He believed that when massive objects crashed into each other, gravitational waves would be created much in the same way ripples in a pond form when a rock is tossed in. In other words, space-time is a dynamic, malleable force.
The gravitational waves were first detected in September by a team of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the California Institute of Tech- nology and the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, or LIGO, which has twin detectors located in both Hanford, Wash., and Livingston, La.
They had been searching for gravitational waves since 2002, using instrumentation so sensitive it can detect miniscule vibrations from passing waves.
They and others have suspected gravitational waves were created by explosive cosmic events like the mergers of black holes, collision of neutron stars and supernovas. By the time those ripples reached Earth, they were estimated to be about one-billionth the diameter of an atom in size, making the search for proof of their existence painstakingly difficult. But not impossible. The LIGO detectors received a significant upgrade in 2015. Since then, rumors have circulated throughout the scientific community that the discovery of the waves was imminent.
On Thursday, scientists announced they had detected the waves on Sept. 14, not long after the upgrade was complete. They were created by the merger of two black holes that had up to 36 times the mass of the sun.
David Reitze, LIGO’s executive director, compared the discovery to those made by Galileo through his telescope.
“I think we’ve done something equally as important,” he said. “I think we’ve opened a new window to the universe.”
Researchers from four Texas universities were a part of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, which included over 1,000 scientists from 14 countries. Among them: Texas Tech, Trinity University, Abilene Christian University and the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley.
“It’s been really hard to sit on this secret for so long, but there are rules,” said Alessandra Corsi, an assistant professor of phys- ics at Texas Tech who was one of seven scientists there who worked on the project.
She said Thursday’s discovery was just the beginning for scientists interested in utilizing gravitational waves to better understand the large-scale, violent cosmic collisions that have shaped the universe.
At Texas Tech, researchers hope to study gravitational waves created by the collisions of neutron stars — something that LIGO team members said seems likely as more detectors go online and the instrumentation becomes even more sensitive.
“What I have hoped to do ever since I got my Ph.D. is to be able to use a telescope and say, ‘Okay, we’ve got gravitational waves coming from this event, what is its electromagnetic counterpart?’” Corsi said. “Wouldn’t it be great to really join the two in our studies?”
The University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley houses the Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy, founded in 2003 with grants from NASA and the National Science Foundation.
The center employs the largest group of gravitational wave researchers in Texas.
Among them is Joey Key, an astrophysicist who analyzes LIGO data.
LIGO’s detection of gravitational waves was not its only significant discovery, Key pointed out; finding the merged black holes also represents a groundbreaking find.
“This is really a new era for astrophysics,” she said.
The new evidence of gravitational waves also has the potential to change the way astronomy and physics are taught in schools and universities across the country.
“This is the kind of discovery that causes textbooks to be rewritten,” Corsi said.