Topic
Field of astrophysics that detects gravitational waves from events like black hole and neutron star mergers to probe cosmic history and gravity.
L3Harris will build the Engineering Test Unit for NASA's all-glass LISA telescope, the agency's last pre-flight unit before flight hardware. NASA is supplying the telescopes and laser system for the ESA-led gravitational-wave observatory, due to launch in the mid-2030s.
Reality
Australian National University researchers spent three years coating two LIGO beamsplitters to within a nanometer or two across almost half a meter of glass. Both optics belong to an upgrade meant to give the detector its greatest sensitivity yet.
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A signal LIGO Hanford and Virgo recorded in October 2024 was loud and lopsided enough to pin down how spin deforms its 19.6-solar-mass object. Rotating boson stars with quartic self-interactions cannot fit it.
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Two Physical Review Letters studies read published LIGO data with different methods and both picked out binaries whose larger member spins fast and sits tilted. One of the estimates puts that group near 14 percent of pairs.
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Fit as a magnified and diffracted signal, GW231123's 190 to 265 solar masses drop to 100 to 180, which matters less for that one event than for every heavy merger in the catalogue nobody has lens-checked.
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If the Universe's first supermassive black holes grew out of stars heated by WIMP dark matter, that history would still sit in a background measured billions of years later. A two-author Letter says the share could be dominant.
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