Our entire universe is one big chaotic sea of ripples in space-time otherwise
known as gravitational waves astronomers and scientists have long believed these
waves to originate from orbiting pairs of supermassive black holes in distant galaxies
and have been desperately trying to observe them for decades now now they might be one step closer
and all thanks to a special team of international scientists and a little help from nasa
welcome to Factnomenal and in today's video we will take a look at how nasa's fermi gamma-ray
telescope could play a key factor in the hunt for gravitational waves and ripples in space-time
at the heart of most galaxies in space you will find a supermassive black hole
different galaxies are all drawn to each other by the immense gravitation
causing them to eventually merge and form a whole new center during this process the black holes
sink and coalesce thus creating long gravitational waves that stretch out to hundreds of trillions of
kilometers between wave crests this is constantly taking place in the universe and has been
ever since the big bang filling space with a whole sea of low frequency space-time ripples
Albert Einstein himself envisioned the universe as something of a wave pool one that you'd
probably see at a water park but in actuality these waves could bend and warp space-time
take planet earth for example which is a relatively smaller sized planet whose
gravity is able to retain an object of average size like the moon but then consider ginormous
structures like black holes which are massive all-consuming and are common enough to produce
a series of gravitational imprints throughout space-time causing a sort of rippling effect
einstein theorized that putting all these strong gravitational impressions together
would create a series of ripples that echo throughout the universe
now scientists and researchers might be a few steps closer in actually proving Einstein right
new studies have shown the first possible hints of a mysterious new kind of gravitational wave
a cosmic ripple that warps the fabric of space and time itself just like Einstein had theorized all
those years ago the first ever direct detection of gravitational waves was in 2016 with the help
of the laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory a discovery which earned the Nobel
Prize just the following year the researchers using LIGO were able to see the space-time
distortions that were created when two black holes collided about 130 million light years from earth
since then LIGO has been actively used as a way to observe such distortions and signals
with the hope that they would be able to unravel some of the ancient cosmic secrets
this however is no easy feat researchers have often described detecting gravitational waves as
background noise while trying to actively listen to small talk at a crowded party primordial
gravitational waves produced nearly 13.8 billion years ago still echo throughout the universe even
today but unfortunately they seem to be drowned out by so many of the other noises produced in
space like colliding black holes neutron stars and more singling out the noises they actually
need to hear is rather difficult astronomers have also been searching for gravitational waves using
large radio telescopes to look for any subtle effect these space-time ripples might have on
the radio waves being emitted from pulsars within our galaxy there have been several challenges
along the way with these methods now a new international team of scientists have shown
that high-energy light collected by nasa's fermi gamma-ray space telescope can also be used in the
search the team including Adithya Partha Sarathi and Michael Kramer from the Max Planck Institute
of Radio Astronomy in Bonn Germany publish their study in the Science Journal on April 7 2022
NASA's fermi gamma-ray space telescope is currently in low earth orbit studying the
most powerful source of radiation in the universe gamma rays unlike the previous methods that were
being used to collect data and analyze the gravitational wave background in space gamma
rays might just be a better way of going about things as we know light energy comes in different
forms and human beings are only able to see a small portion of the different types of lights
visible light the light which we can see has medium length waves microwaves in infrared light
waves are comparatively longer than visible light waves and radio waves have the longest wavelengths
on the other hand gamma rays and x-rays have the shortest wavelengths even shorter than
visible light but the good thing about that is the shorter wavelengths have much more energy
the high energy is harmful to people on earth but since we are protected by the earth's atmosphere
scientists send out satellites in space to study these gamma rays gamma rays come from
some of the most extreme places in the universe like exploding stars and the mysterious black
holes studying these gamma rays emitted from objects like black holes or pulsars could give
us the answers we need about the ripples in space time this is where nasa's fermi comes in
nasa launched its 690 million dollar fermi gamma-ray space telescope formerly known as
the gamma-ray large area space telescope a space observatory being used to perform gamma-ray
observations from low-earth orbit on the 11th of June 2008. the spacecraft was named after Italian
American physicist the Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi who was the first to suggest that cosmic rays may
come from supernovas or violent star explosions back in 1949. by peering at the cosmos from
low earth orbit it has been able to detect the most powerful gamma-ray bursts that astronomers
have ever seen and even the mysterious gamma-ray bubbles around the milky way the fermi telescope
has two main instruments a large telescope that finds gamma rays with 10 million to even more than
300 billion times the energy of visible light and detectors that observe gamma-ray bursts it
has been collecting data on various mysterious gamma-ray bursts and discovering new pulsars
the dense remnants of massive stars pulsars rotate with extreme regularity and astronomers are able
to tell exactly when to expect each new pulse the sea of gravitational waves however alters when the
pulses arrive on earth taking advantage of this a precise monitoring of many pulsars across the sky
could reveal the presence of the gravitational waves which are otherwise so much harder to
detect Matthew Kerr research physicist at the u.s naval research laboratory in Washington said
FERMI studies the universe in gamma rays the most energetic form of light
we've been surprised at how good it is at finding the types of pulsars we need to look for these
gravitational waves over 100 so far the team put together data collected over 10 years by the fermi
gamma-ray space telescope and their analysis shows that it could actually be quite feasible to detect
these waves with probably a couple years more of additional observations that may not sound
like much but in the study of space that's huge pulsars were originally discovered using radio
telescopes and pulsar timing array experiments with radio telescopes for nearly two decades now
space is mostly empty but even in the vast distance between a pulsar and earth
radio waves would still encounter many electrons which could alter the time of their arrival
and interstellar electrons bend the radio waves gamma rays on the other hand aren't affected quite
as much in this manner and are proving to be an excellent complementary method of pulsar timing
co-author of the study Partha Sarathi said the fermi results are already 30 as good as the radio
pulsar timing arrays when it comes to potentially detecting the gravitational wave background
with another five years of pulsar data collection and analysis it will be equally capable with
the added bonus of not having to worry about all those stray electrons within the next decade or so
radio and gamma-ray astronomers both expect to reach sensitivity that would then allow them
to pick up gravitational waves from pulsars and orbiting pairs of monster black holes
though no waves have been detected thus far analysis has shown with observations these
waves will be well within fermi's reach as of now the team is focusing their efforts on discovering
new pulsars and collecting the data they require for future analysis of the gravitational wave
background this new method using pulsars and black holes to detect the waves if successful would
absolutely go down in history as one of the great modern day discoveries a gamma-ray pulsar timing
array was not envisioned before the launch of fermi and could change the face of gravitational
wave astrophysics forever making use of the fermi gamma-ray space telescope is good news for both
further findings and it will be even more useful when used in conjunction with radio experiments
do you think scientists can trace gravitational waves with the help of nasa's fermi
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