The Sound of Ancient Gravity

“Binary inspiral” refers to a binary system (with two neutron stars or black holes, for example) where the two objects are spiraling in towards each other. The two bodies about to collide are called Hulse-Taylor objects because Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor were the two scientists who first discovered a binary pulsar (and received a Nobel Prize for their work). When the objects curl in together and finally collide, they make a unique noise that scientists can collect using special instrumentation. Listen to this sound and then see if you can pick it out of the stream of white noise that the instrument actually collects. Physicists like MIT’s Rainer Weiss must program computers to detect the hallmark noise of an inspiral event as well as indicators of other types of events, like a supernova.

Original Program Date: June 4, 2010

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