Additionally, because gravitational waves carry information on the distance of the objects that emitted them, LISA will help researchers measure the change in the expansion of the Universe with a different type of yardstick from the techniques used by Euclid and other surveys, validating their results.Ĭloser to home, in our own galaxy, LISA will detect many merging pairs of compact objects like white dwarfs or neutron stars and give us a unique insight into the final stages of the evolution of these systems. The mission is poised to capture the predicted gravitational ‘ringing’ from the initial moments of our Universe and offer a direct glimpse into the very first seconds after the Big Bang. This will enable scientists to trace the origin of these monstrous objects, to chart how they grow to be millions of times more massive than the Sun and to establish the role they play in the evolution of galaxies. LISA will detect, across the entire Universe, the ripples in spacetime caused when huge black holes at the centres of galaxies collide. “Thanks to the huge distance travelled by the laser signals on LISA, and the superb stability of its instrumentation, we will probe gravitational waves of lower frequencies than is possible on Earth, uncovering events of a different scale, all the way back to the dawn of time.” To expand the frontier of gravitational studies we must go to space,” explains LISA lead project scientist Nora Lützgendorf. Using laser beams over distances of several kilometres, ground-based instrumentation can detect gravitational waves coming from events involving star-sized objects – such as supernova explosions or merging of hyper-dense stars and stellar-mass black holes. “LISA is an endeavour that has never been tried before. Thanks to modern technological developments, we are now able to detect these most elusive of signals. Just over a century ago, Einstein made the revolutionary prediction that when massive objects accelerate, they shake the fabric of spacetime, producing miniscule ripples known as gravitational waves.
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