Promising Discovery on Low Frequency Gravity Waves

[Wayne]

Ever bump into someone and start talking astronomy? Met a relative of an astrophysicist (Joseph Simon) who recently reported on exciting developments in gravitational wave research at the January American Astronomical Society meeting.

NANOGrav (North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves) used radio observatories to study selected millisecond Pulsars. NANOGrav times the arrival of Pulsar signals looking for a slight delay in one direction while the signal in another direction arrives early. This predicted effect is evidence of Earth bobbing around as space-time stretches or shrinks from perhaps supermassive binary orbiting black holes. They found a pattern, just not exactly what they were expecting.

NANOGrav video presentation (10 minutes), along with written explanation.
http://nanograv.org/press/2021/01/11/12 ... round.html

American Astronomical Society meeting info:
https://aas.org/posts/news/2021/01/astr ... as-meeting