News Astronomy

Gravitational wave ‘radar’ could help map the invisible universe

Such “GRADAR” signals could spot globs of dark matter or very distant neutron stars

illustration of gravitational waves from merging black holes

Gravitational waves (visualized in this simulation radiating from a merging pair of black holes) can get redirected by massive objects, which researchers might someday leverage as a kind of gravity ‘radar’ to map the unseen denizens of the universe, a new study suggests.

NASA

By Asa Stahl

It sounds like the setup for a joke: If radio waves give you radar and sound gives you sonar, what do gravitational waves get you?

The answer might be “GRADAR” — gravitational wave “radar” — a potential future technology that could use reflections of gravitational waves to map the unseen universe, say researchers in a paper accepted to Physical Review Letters.