The universe is like a restless sea: scientists have found evidence of the existence of space-time churns
Several international groups of scientists independently found convincing evidence for the existence of space-time churns. This was reported by The Washington Post.
The claim that telescopes around the planet have seen signs of the “gravitational wave background” has sent shockwaves through the astrophysics community. The discovery seems to affirm an astounding implication of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity that until now has been far too subtle to detect.
In Einstein’s reimagined universe, space is not serenely empty, and time does not march smoothly forward. Instead, the powerful gravitational interactions of massive objects — including supermassive black holes — regularly ripple the fabric of space and time. The picture that emerges is a universe that looks like a choppy sea, churned by violent events that happened over the course of the past 13 billion-plus years.
The gravitational wave background, as described by astrophysicists, does not put any torque on everyday human existence. There is not a weight-loss discovery in here somewhere. A burble of gravitational waves cannot explain why some days you feel out of sorts. But it does offer potential insight into the physical reality we all inhabit.
“What we measure is the Earth kind of moving in this sea. It’s bobbing around — and it’s not just bobbing up and down, its bobbing in all directions,” said Michael Lam, an astrophysicist at the SETI Institute and a member of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav).
Its team is mostly based in North America. It published the results of her research in five articles in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Teams from Europe, India, Australia and China were also observing the phenomenon and planned to publish their research at the same time. The publication of papers by distant and competing teams that used similar methodology occurred only after a certain amount of scientific diplomacy that ensured that no one group attempted to seize the initiative from the rest of the astrophysics community.
“We’ve been on a mission for the last 15 years to find a low-pitch hum of gravitational waves resounding throughout the universe and washing through our galaxy to warp space-time in a measurable way,” NANOGrav chair Stephen Taylor of Vanderbilt University said at a news briefing Tuesday. “We’re very happy to announce that our hard work has paid off.”
We will remind you, earlier a group of 17 international scientists published two articles that offer the first observational evidence of the existence of a source of dark energy. According to the authors, after analyzing data spanning 9 billion years of cosmic evolution, the most likely answer is black holes.