Was the Gravitational Wave Background Finally Discovered?!?

July 26, 2023
17 min
Season 2023 - Episode 20: Was the Gravitational Wave Background Finally Discovered?!?

Season 2023 - Episode 20: Was the Gravitational Wave Background Finally Discovered?!?

Was the Gravitational Wave Background Finally Discovered?!? - Episode 20

Overview

A few weeks ago a large team of gravitational wave astronomers announced something pretty wild. The moderately confident detection of pervasive ripples in the fabric of space time that presumably fills the cosmos, detected by watching for subtle connections between the signals from rapidly spinning cores of dead stars in our galactic neighborhood. In other words, the gravitational wave background has probably been detected using a pulsar timing array.

Episode Information

TV Show

PBS Space Time

Season

Season 2023

Episode Number

20

Air Date

July 26, 2023

Runtime

17 minutes