What will the revolutionary gravitational observatory of the wave actually see

Lisa, a $ 1.6 billion gravitational wave observatory, which will start in the next decade, will revolutionize the way we see the gravitational waves – the endless disturbances of the space predicted more than a century ago and have been discovered only eight years ago.

In the fall we published a Deep diving in Lisa’s design And the engineering obstacles that need to be overcome to bring the futuristic craft into space. Now, we have asked the scientists about the actual data that Lisa will collect – what insights can give data and how these insights stand to change our understanding of the universe, from the sources of its gravitational pulsations to the way these echoes form space.

Lisa: simple but accurate

Lisa means the laser interferometric antenna and contains three spacecraft orbiting the orbit of the sun in a fixed triangular formation. Lisa is an Interferometer, Meaning That The Mission Will Sniff Out Gravitation Waves Using LaSer Interferometry – Measuring The Distance Between Masse Using Laser of Lisa’s Triangle Comprising About 1.6 Million Miles (2.5 million km) of this length.

Lasers are crucial, but only one part of Lisa’s design – they are just measuring sticks for distances between three metal cubes, one in each of the three Lisa spacecraft. The cubes are made of gold-platin alloy to minimize the magnetism that can act on them. Again, Lisa’s goal is to travel through space with a positive thing that touches these cubes, except for the spatial time and gravitational pulsations that drive it.

“The main idea behind the design is that we are launching these cubes,” says Savik Ford, Astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History, calling Gizmodo. “We just want them to sit there and experience the joy of space time without other forces acting on them, and this is the last part that is the difficult part.”

“You have to maneuver the craft as the masses (gold platinum cubes) fall to make sure that the spacecraft itself does not move in the masses and hit them, which would be terrible,” Ford added.

As for Lisa’s sophistication, then Ford Jake Postaglion’s then student has an analogy: the technical challenge is similar to a laser shooting from New York to LA (if the ground was flat) and tries to hit the eyeball of the fruit fly of the fruit fly Fruit Fly Fly Fly Fly Fly Fly Fly Fly Fly Fly with it. Both the laser and the fruit fly move as this operation develops.

The scale of the engineering challenge is “frankly mindless,” said Ford, “I am glad that this is not my department.”

NASA provides several elements of Lisa’s instrumentation, including its laser system, telescopic systems and devices that will control the levels of electric charge of the test cubes.

The frequency of orbiting objects is determined by how often they finish complete orbit around each other. Our gravitational wave detectors are good for detecting certain frequencies for various reasons, but each existing detector has one major restriction: they are stuck on Earth.

Space Oracle for ancient black holes

Gravity wave detectors vary in the types of orbital frequencies they detect. The ground detectors are the cooperation of the Ligo-Virgo-Cagra-are great when detecting high frequencies that correspond to smaller masses such as black holes the size of the stars. But when these tables become a little more bigger – say, more than two hundred times more than the mass of our sun – their orbital frequencies are a similar range of noise produced by our own planet.

“In principle, there is a frequency at which the earth itself is simply so noisy that the Earth is your problem,” Ford said. “You literally can’t do it. You have to go into space, one way or another. “

In space, the pulsar massifs for time make a useful measuring stick for the largest black holes, although the Earth is still part of the equation. In this setting, the Earth’s observatories observe the reliable lights of light from fast rotating objects (pulsars); When the time of this light to the earth is slightly Funny or accelerated, this is an indication that spatial time is stretched or compressed by gravitational waves. In 2023, a group of cooperation with Pulsar arrays found serious evidence of a Gravitational wave background in Pulsar data.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ib6iiexaiy

The black holes observed by the pulsar timing massifs are usually billions of times the mass of the sun and reside in the center of the monster galaxies – they even dwarf sartitaria A*, the black hole in the center of the Milky Way, which attracts approximately the rough black hole in the center On the Milky Way, which is attracted to rough in nearly four million solar masses. If the black holes were porridge, Lisa would have been gold. The mission will blow out low -frequency gravitational waves, which are almost impossible to distinguish from noise in ground -based detectors. This is what the Space Observatory said may be able to find Massive mergers of black holes-black holes with the size of stars that fall into over-massive-evenly with intimate binary files of compact objects and other astrophysical outbursts and backgrounds.

“Pulsar Timing arrays give us information about the stochastic background for massive binary files with black holes at very low frequencies, and Ligo has mainly set the speeds of speeds from different families of the merger of compact objects at a star mass,” says Emanuele Berti, a theoretical physicist in John Hopkins University in Gizmodo video call. “Thinking has changed in different ways, but I would say that the most interesting science we can do with Lisa is focused around massive binary mergers of black holes, because it is something we just can’t explore on Earth. “

Avoiding noise in space

Although Lisa will have much less disturbance in space than on Earth – perfectly zero – the observatory will have to sift through space noise. There are objects in the universe that make black holes much more difficult to view because they also emit gravitational waves. The most terrible form of these compact interloats are Was a dwarf binary files: Compact shells of ex -stars who go around each other and eventually merge, stirring the space in the process like stirring in a mixer. An exception to this noise will be when the binars are So It is pronounced that they can be selected individually and recognized what they are. A two -edged space sword, those “Checking binary files“It will help astronomers to confirm Lisa’s capabilities after the mission is in place.

Lisa will simultaneously find noise of millions of sources, many of which are in our galaxy, According to NASAS Scientists will separate wheat from the chaff with the help of a huge amount of data processing and adapt the data to existing theories and patterns of the famous objects of the universe. With more than a decade, while Lisa is expected to start, scientists are working on layout data challenges to prepare for the real deal.

Tracking space evolution

“There are actually only two questions in astrophysics and they are,” How did we get here? “And” are we alone? “Ford said. “Every single thing we do is aimed at answering a small piece of one or the other and from time to time and these questions.”

“We are not in the game of black holes that usually talk to answer something to do with,” Are we ourselves? “Ford added. “But” how we got here is quite important to understand these black holes. “

Understanding the birth, life and death of the stars – and the role of these nuclear furnaces in the production of elements – is inextricably linked to black holesS In addition, the types of stars formed by galaxies and the amount in which they are formed can be associated with the mass and behavior of the black holes in the nuclei of these galaxies. Black holes can be scattered eating – often Owl and Discharging it in space – creating them active participants In the evolution of the universe around them.

– there are several Reports around thehe so -called A little Red Points that point outward that there are slight AGNS (active galactic nuclei – glowing nuclei of galaxies powered by over -fat black holes) that are probably coming from accumulation massive Black Holes, ”Bertie said. “ll to this evidence once again points outward that massive Black holes should have existed quite early to in thehe Story to thehe Universe. It have always it was a puzzle, bUt It’s Becoming into E.Ventio More to a Puzzle. “

Observations of the webb space telescope of small red dots see the lights of light as they were when the universe was between 600 million years and 1.5 billion years. Still Recent studies Indicates that the points are signs of the earlier darkened growth of black holes in the early universe – and cosmological models are not “broken”, as it is suggested that the titles – Lisa observations would help to discover the exact nature of the puzzling light sources S

Lisa will observe the killing of black holes and will better characterize the array of compact objects in our universe. This information can also be applied to existing cosmological models and prevailing theories, such as Einstein’s general relativity. The data of the earthly truth (so to speak-here we are talking about space) will be a captivating stress test for these ideas for the universe, one of which was known when Ligo first discovered the gravitational waves in 2015. There are many known unknowns in Ink black ion for space, but Lisa scientists are determined to pull the curtain – if only a little – some of the most basic mysteries of the universe.