Testing general relativity’s prediction about the shape of a black hole. However, researchers have ruled out a number of alternative explanations, based on many observations of black holes.ĭo Stars Fall Quietly into Black Holes, or Crash into Something Utterly Unknown? The challenge is that black holes appear very small in our telescopes, so it’s hard to observe their behavior. While GR is very clear that black holes exist, alternative theories propose different objects that behave in different ways. Space-Warping White Dwarfs Produce Gravitational Wavesĭetermining whether black holes are actually what GR predicts. One pair in particular orbits every 12.75 minutes, which will make it the strongest source for the future Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). Using visible light telescopes, astronomers have observed that white dwarf binaries are relatively common in the galaxy, and some of them are in sufficiently tight orbits to be emitters of gravitational waves. Studying gravitational wave sources that aren’t visible to LIGO, but will be to future gravitational observatories. Astronomers observed such a collision in 2017 using Dark Energy Camera on the Blanco Telescope in Chile, providing complementary data to the observation from LIGO.Īstronomers See Light Show Associated With Gravitational Waves Collisions between neutron stars produce a lot of light in the form of short duration gamma ray bursts in addition to gravitational waves. Performing follow-up observations of gravitational wave events, to confirm the nature of the source. Next-generation observatories like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will provide a census of millions of galaxies from their gravitational distortions. Reconstructing the location of most of the mass in the universe using gravitational lensing. While they’re too faint to be seen directly, closer-by galaxies and clusters sometimes magnify their light, allowing us to learn about the ancestors of the Milky Way and other modern galaxies.ĭiscovering Distant Radio Galaxies via Gravitational Lensing Using gravitational lensing to search for the earliest galaxies in the universe. This image of the black hole at the center of the nearby galaxy M87 reveals how gravitation affects the matter in orbit and the light that material emits, providing a novel test of general relativity in a regime where gravity is very strong.ĬfA Plays Central Role In Capturing Landmark Black Hole Image Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian astrophysicists research the predictions of general relativity in many ways:Ĭapturing the first image of a supermassive black hole using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT).
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