New Gravitational Wave Detector Picks Up Mysterious Signals, A Never-Before-Seen Occurrence

A tabletop gravitational wave detector has recently recorded mysterious signals in its over 150 days of operation. Two mysterious signals were specifically recorded by the device, a piece of ringing quartz.

ScienceAlert report said that it is not clear precisely what the said signals are. They could be from certain phenomena. Although, one of those occurrences is accurately what the detector is designed to pick up for, high-frequency gravitational waves, which have previously been recorded.

It's quite early to conclude, although the next iteration of this detector will be able to slim down what resulted in the quartz reverberate.

According to Michael Tobar, a physicist at the University of Western Australia, it is exciting that such an occurrence has presented that the new detector is sensitive, not to mention, providing findings, although now, there is a need to determine exactly what such results mean.

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High-Frequency Gravitational Waves

With this particular research, the researchers were able to demonstrate for the first time, that such devices can be used as extremely sensitive gravitational wave detectors.

Essentially, the initial groundbreaking detection of waves was made only six years ago. Since then, the so-called Ligo and Virgo detectors have continued revealing that the Universe is ringing with formerly hidden waves that ripple out from collisions between neutron stars and black holes, a similar New Atlas report said.

The detectors are particularly large with arms, four kilometers in length. Lasers, along these arms, are meticulously disrupted by gravitational waves, generating interference patterns in the recombined light that can be evaluated to show the nature of the occurrence that resulted from waves. So far, the technology has been boosted for low-frequency administration.

Moreover, high-frequency gravitational waves are much more difficult to identify, although undoubtedly worthy to pursue.

The gravitational waves' wavelength is proportionate to the Universe's size; those taking place later are bigger, so shorter, high-frequency waves could show information on the Big Bang, as well as the Universe at the start of time.

Tabletop Detector

High-frequency sources of gravitational sources in the more recent past could comprise hypothetical materials like boson stars and primordial black holes.

The waves could even be generated by the dark matter's clouds. Therefore, astronomers would deeply be interested in detecting such signals.

Tobar, together with his colleague, Maxim Goryyachef, a physicist from the University of Western Australia, developed a tabletop detector in 2014 for high-frequency gravitational waves. Now, together with an international team, they have carried out observing runs.

Bulk Acoustic Wave Resonator

The detector itself is a disk of quartz crystal known as BAW or bulk acoustic wave resonator, with one side a little convex. Theoretically, high-frequency gravitational waves need to produce standing sound waves in the risk, which are trapped by the convex side as phonons.

The detector itself is a disk of quartz crystal, called a bulk acoustic wave (BAW) resonator, with one side slightly convex. Theoretically, high-frequency gravitational waves should generate standing sound waves in the disk, which is trapped as phonons by the convex side.

As specified in the study, published in Physical Review Letters, the disk is "cryogenically cooled" to lessen thermal noise, and conducting plates positioned at very small distances from the crystal pick up tiny piezoelectric signals produced by the acoustic modes vibrating therein.

Related information about the new gravitational wave detector is shown on Antov Petrov's YouTube video below: