New Discovery On Black Hole Mergers

Scientists have made an exciting discovery in space. They have found that the entire universe is vibrating and humming with a frequency of a billionth of a hertz. This is the first direct evidence of a gravitational wave background, something that astrophysicists have been hunting for decades. The signal is about 100 times weaker than the faintest known radio waves. This remarkable discovery was made using Pulsar Timing Arrays, a brilliant technique in which 67 millisecond pulsars were used to create a galaxy-sized detector. The gravitational wave background is thought to be caused by the mergers of supermassive black holes. These mergers release a tremendous amount of energy in the form of gravitational waves, which travel through the universe at the speed of light. The finding also provides a solution to the long-standing astrophysics mystery, the final parsec problem.