In 2015, almost a century after Einstein published the general theory of relativity, one of its most important predictions was verified by direct detection: the production of gravitational waves in spacetime by accelerating objects. Since then, gravitational-wave astronomy has enabled tests of the nature of gravity and the properties of black holes, and in 2017 electromagnetic observations of a double neutron star merger producing gravitational waves led to a focus on multi-messenger astronomy. Here we review the history and accomplishments of gravitational-wave astronomy and look towards the future.
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Criteria for identifying and evaluating locations that could potentially host the Cosmic Explorer observatories.
Rev Sci Instrum
January 2025
LIGO Hanford Observatory, Richland, Washington 99352, USA.
Cosmic Explorer is a next-generation ground-based gravitational-wave observatory that is being designed in the 2020s and is envisioned to begin operations in the 2030s together with the Einstein Telescope in Europe. The Cosmic Explorer concept currently consists of two widely separated L-shaped observatories in the United States, one with 40 km-long arms and the other with 20 km-long arms. This order of magnitude increase in scale with respect to the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observatories will, together with technological improvements, deliver an order of magnitude greater astronomical reach, allowing access to gravitational waves from remnants of the first stars and opening a wide discovery aperture to the novel and unknown.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Quantum Memory Matrix: A Unified Framework for the Black Hole Information Paradox.
Entropy (Basel)
November 2024
Terra Quantum AG, Kornhausstrasse 25, 9000 St. Gallen, Switzerland.
We present the Quantum Memory Matrix (QMM) hypothesis, which addresses the longstanding Black Hole Information Paradox rooted in the apparent conflict between Quantum Mechanics (QM) and General Relativity (GR). This paradox raises the question of how information is preserved during black hole formation and evaporation, given that Hawking radiation appears to result in information loss, challenging unitarity in quantum mechanics. The QMM hypothesis proposes that space-time itself acts as a dynamic quantum information reservoir, with quantum imprints encoding information about quantum states and interactions directly into the fabric of space-time at the Planck scale.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMagnetospheric origin of a fast radio burst constrained using scintillation.
Nature
January 2025
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Article Synopsis
- Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are brief bursts of radio waves from distant galaxies, and their emission mechanisms are still debated, focusing on processes near a central engine versus shocks at large distances.
- Researchers measured two scintillation scales for FRB 20221022A, one linked to the Milky Way and the other to its host galaxy, which allowed them to determine the FRB's emission region size to be less than 3 x 10 kilometers.
- This size contradicts the large-distance model and suggests that the emission likely occurs close to a central compact object, supported by an observed S-shaped polarization angle, indicating a magnetospheric emission process.
A pulsar-like polarization angle swing from a nearby fast radio burst.
Nature
January 2025
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
Article Synopsis
- Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are intense signals from deep space that last for milliseconds and share some characteristics with pulsars, suggesting they may originate from neutron stars.
- Despite similarities, FRBs like 20221022A display different patterns in their linear polarization position angle (PA), particularly a 130° rotation that aligns with pulsar behaviors, hinting at magnetospheric origins.
- This study rules out short-period pulsars as potential sources for FRB 20221022A, supporting the idea that its unique PA evolution fits the rotating vector model commonly used for pulsars.
Implications of cosmologically coupled black holes for pulsar timing arrays.
Sci Rep
December 2024
Department of Physics, University of Trento, Via Sommarive 14, 38123, Povo (TN), Italy.
It has been argued that realistic models of (singularity-free) black holes (BHs) embedded within an expanding Universe are coupled to the large-scale cosmological dynamics, with striking consequences, including pure cosmological growth of BH masses. In this pilot study, we examine the consequences of this growth for the stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) produced by inspiraling supermassive cosmologically coupled BHs. We show that the predicted SGWB amplitude is enhanced relative to the standard uncoupled case, while maintaining the [Formula: see text] frequency scaling of the spectral energy density.
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