SYDNEY, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- An international research led by Australian astronomers has created the most detailed maps of gravitational waves across the universe to date, according to three new studies published on Tuesday.
Researchers have used the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa to discover new insights into the universe's largest black holes, how they shaped the universe and the cosmic architecture they left behind.
Led by astronomers from the Swinburne University of Technology and Monash University, both in Melbourne, the research produced the largest ever galactic-scale detector of gravitational waves.
Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of space and time caused when dense and massive objects, such as black holes or stars, orbit or collide with each other. First theorized by Albert Einstein in 1916, gravitational waves travel at the speed of light and were first detected in 2016.
The research team used miniscule changes caused by gravitational waves to the steady pulses of rapidly spinning neutron stars known as pulsars as a galactic-scale detector of the waves.
The detector allowed them to create a highly-detailed map of gravitational waves across the universe.
The map revealed an unexpected hotspot in the signal of gravitational waves that could indicate a directional bias.
"The presence of a hotspot could suggest a distinct gravitational wave source, such as a pair of black holes billions of times the mass of our sun," Rowina Nathan, lead author of one of the three studies from Monash University and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav), said.
"Looking at the layout and patterns of gravitational waves shows us how our universe exists today and contains signals from as far back as the Big Bang," she said. "There's more work to do to determine the significance of the hotspot we found, but this is an exciting step forward for our field."
Another of the studies led by Matt Miles from Swinburne and OzGrav discovered further evidence of gravitational waves originating from merging supermassive black holes, capturing stronger signals than previous research in one third of the time.
Miles said that the discoveries hint at a more dynamic and active universe than previously thought.
The team is now working to refine the map of gravitational waves to find the fingerprints of the underlying processes. ■
