Gravitational Wave Background Discovered?
PBS Space Time

Gravitational Wave Background Discovered?

C1AdvancedNovember 13, 202623 min
  • One speaker
  • Science

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Uploaded 17-02-21 Check Out Overview on PBS Terra: https://youtu.be/Pgj95EntvW0 Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime It was pretty impressive when LIGO detected gravitational waves from colliding black holes. Well we’ve just taken that to the next level with a galaxy-spanning gravitational wave detector that may have detected a foundational elemen...

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waves from colliding black holes.

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0:00

It was pretty impressive when we built this giant machine that spotted gravitational waves from colliding black holes. Well, we've just taken it to the next level with a galaxy-spanning gravitational wave detector that may have detected a foundational element of space itself, the gravitational

0:15

wave background. When the laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory, LIGO, turned on in 2015, it quickly spotted exactly what it was built to detect. Vast ripples in the fabric of space-time produced by colliding black holes a billion light-years

0:34

away. Since then, LIGO and its partner Virgo have detected 50 similar signals from merging black holes and neutron stars across the universe. These sweep past the Earth every few days, causing space itself to oscillate.

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