A phenomenon predicted by Albert Einstein would allow us to see the beginning of the universe
Gravitational waves, yet never observed in his time, were theorized by Albert Einstein. Observable today, they could tell us a lot about the first ages of the post-Big Bang universe.
If you have followed your Physics and Chemistry courses, you will certainly know that the further you see in space, the more you see in the past . Are you lost? It's normal. Let's illustrate with an example.
Lights and gravitational waves.
Everything we perceive is possible through light . Knowing that it moves at 300,000 kilometers per second, everything we see in a close environment reaches us instantly. But what about objects located ?extremely far from our eye
As you will have understood, this is the canonical example of the stars that we see at night but which are, for some, already dead . All that remains is the light it diffuses and which still reaches us. Knowing that many stars are light years away, their light will still reach us for a long time.
Waves, matter and radiation
Well it's pretty much the same for gravitational waves . According to researchers in astronomy, the tremors of the Big Bang would still be spreading in the universe. By studying them, we could gather valuable information about the first moments of space: the early universe.
"We can't see the early universe directly, but maybe we can see it indirectly if we look at how gravitational waves from that time affected the matter and radiation we can observe today ," says the physicist. Deepen Garg from Princeton University.
Like the ripples in the water
According to astronomers, if we manage to capture the different signals present in these waves that travel through space, we would also be able to understand the many “ noises” of the universe. The low-frequency waves moved by black holes , and the buzzes generated by white dwarf-type binary stars, for example.
Theorized upstream by Albert Einstein, gravitational waves are to space what ripples are to a pond . Like traces of the past. Published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics , the first results of the study are up to what the researchers expected. Although there are still many things to discover.
“I thought it would be a small project ,” says physicist Ilya Dodin. "But once we started digging into it, we realized we could do a lot of theoretical work here."
Source : websites