MPI for Gravitational Physics

✨ Neues Forschungshighlight ✨

🔎 @einsteinathome@academiccloud.social's genauer Blick auf die zentralen Objekte in drei Supernova-Überresten

Forschende der @maxplanckgesellschaft@wisskomm.social in der permanenten unabhängigen Forschungsgruppe „Kontinuierliche Gravitationswellen“ am @mpi_grav@academiccloud.social haben Ergebnisse einer gezielten Suche nach kontinuierlichen Gravitationswellen von drei jungen Supernova-Überresten in öffentlichen Daten von @LIGO@scicomm.xyz.

ℹ️ https://www.aei.mpg.de/1406453/einstein-home-s-most-sensitive-continuous-gravitational-wave-search (auf Englisch)

📄 https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.15672

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#Gravitationswellen #Astrophysik #CitizenScience

✨ New selected research highlight ✨

🔎 @einsteinathome@academiccloud.social's close look at the central compact objects in three supernova remnants.

@maxplanckgesellschaft@wisskomm.social researchers from the permanent independent research group “Continuous Gravitational Waves” at the @mpi_grav@academiccloud.social have published results from targeted searches for continuous gravitational waves from three young supernova remnants using public @LIGO@scicomm.xyz data.

The computing power of the volunteer distributed computing project @einsteinathome@academiccloud.social made this possible.

No detection was made and these results provide the most stringent constraints on the ellipticity, r-mode amplitude, and, for the first time ever, crustal anisotropy of the stellar remnants.

One signal candidate remains after follow-up investigations of three independent data sets. Whether it is of astrophysical origin can only be decided by analyzing additional data not yet publicly available.

ℹ️ https://www.aei.mpg.de/1404141/probing-three-supernova-remnants-with-einstein-home

📄 https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.15672

#GravitationalWaves #Astrophysics

✨ New selected research highlight ✨

Einstein@Home conducts most sensitive search for elusive continuous gravitational waves.

✨ Astronomers expect the Galactic population of neutron stars – compact remnants of supernova explosions – to be a promising source of continuous gravitational waves, which have yet to be detected.

🔭 Since the sky positions, spin frequencies, and frequency derivatives of individual neutron stars are unknown, wide-band, all-sky searches are one of the main tools used in the field. Researchers from the independent @maxplanckgesellschaft@wisskomm.social research group “Continuous Gravitational Waves” at the @mpi_grav@academiccloud.social have recently published the deepest all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves to date.

ℹ️ https://www.aei.mpg.de/1403593/einstein-home-s-most-sensitive-continuous-gravitational-wave-search

📄 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae225a (Open Access)

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#Research #Science #Astronomy #GravitationalWaves #CitizenScience #NeutronStars

✨ New selected research highlight ✨

LISA on a tabletop

First milestone towards a hardware-in-the-loop testbed of the space-based gravitational-wave detector

ℹ️ https://www.aei.mpg.de/1413242/lisa-on-a-tabletop

📄 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6382/ae4708

A team of @mpi_grav@academiccloud.social and @unihannover@wisskomm.social researchers has successfully demonstrated hardware simulations of the LISA inter-satellite links. Their hardware testbed uses field-programmable gate arrays, high-speed computer memory, and signal converters.

It can digitally simulate realistic delays, Doppler shifts, and the injection and recovery of gravitational-wave signals.

#LISA #GravitationalWaves #Research #Science #Space #Laser #FPGA

10 years ago today, the first direct detection of gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger was announced.

The German press conference took place at @mpi_grav@academiccloud.social in Hannover, simultaneously with press conferences in the US and in Italy.

Here's two pictures from the Hannover press conference in our large seminar room filled to the last seat.

#GW10Years #OTD #GravitationalWaves #GW150914

Testing Einstein’s theory of relativity with the clearest gravitational-wave signal yet ℹ️ https://www.aei.mpg.de/1391414/testing-einstein-s-theory-of-relativity-with-the-clearest-gravitational-wave-signal-yet 📄 https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/6c61-fm1n (Open Access) 1️⃣ Relativity put to the test: A LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA team has conducted some of the most precise tests of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. 2️⃣ Einstein holds fast: In all tests, the observations match the theory’s predictions. In some cases, the tests based on this signal alone are two to three times more stringent than those obtained by combining data from dozens of other signals. 3️⃣ The clearest signal: The team used data from GW250114, the strongest gravitational-wave signal ever detected from the merger of two black holes. 4️⃣ Like a bell: For the first time, detailed analyses of the complete signal and the ringdown phase, which occurs shortly after the merger, have identified or constrained three gravitational-wave tones. Image: H. Pfeiffer, A. Buonanno (@mpi_grav@academiccloud.social), K. Mitman (Cornell University) #Relativity #BlackHoles

📣 New header image 🖼️

The image shows data from four new gamma-ray pulsars, found by @mpi_grav@academiccloud.social researchers, their international colleagues, abd our citizen science project @einsteinathome@academiccloud.social in data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.

📄 Publication: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae0b5c

💬 News item on the project homepage: https://einsteinathome.org/content/einsteinhome-probes-galactic-center-gamma-ray-glow

🆕 New selected research highlight ✨

Einstein@Home probes the Galactic center gamma-ray glow 🌌

The volunteer computing project @einsteinathome@academiccloud.social searched for members of a proposed, hidden millisecond pulsar population near the center of the Milky Way and discovered four new pulsars.

ℹ️ https://www.aei.mpg.de/1318665/einstein-home-probes-the-galactic-center-gamma-ray-glow

📄 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae0b5c [Open Access publication in The Astrophysical Journal]

#CitizenScience #Astronomy #Pulsars #Astrophysics #Physics #Discovery #OpenAccess

✨ New header picture 🖼️

The day after tomorrow, on 6 November, this year's “Knowember of Science” will begin at our Hannover institute with a total of seven public talks and the “Night of Science”.

You'll find our complete program at https://www.aei.mpg.de/1275715/november-der-wissenschaft-2025.

All talks are hybrid events. You can join in live from anywhere. Details can be found on the aforementioned website.

#SciComm #Knowember #Physics #Talk #Lecture #Outreach

LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observe unlike twin signals

Latest gravitational-wave discoveries from fourth observing run provide new insights into black hole formation as well as particle physics

ℹ️ https://www.aei.mpg.de/1317243/ligo-virgo-kagra-observe-unlike-twin-signals

Two exceptional gravitational-wave events from pairs of coalescing black holes stand out among the many other signal candidates observed by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration in fall 2024. While the two events, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters today, have many similarities, they also exhibit notable differences.

The unique blend of signal characteristics allowed the international research team to decipher a possible origin story of these unlike twins from earlier black hole coalescences.

Additionally, the signals enable rigorous tests of Einstein’s theory of relativity and a search for new, yet unknown elementary particles.

Image: Carl Knox, OzGrav, Swinburne University of Technology

#GravitationalWaves #astronomy #astrophysics

On this day five years ago, an international team led by researchers at @mpi_grav@academiccloud.social in Hannover, Germany, identified a Galactic “mystery source” of gamma rays.

It contains a heavy neutron star with a very low mass companion orbiting it. Using novel data analysis methods running on about 10,000 graphics cards in the distributed computing project @einsteinathome@academiccloud.social, the team identified the neutron star by its regularly pulsating gamma rays in a deep search of data from NASA's Fermi satellite.

➡️ https://www.aei.mpg.de/545717/superschwergewicht-und-fliegengewicht-im-kosmischen-tanz

📄 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/abbc02 [Open Access]

Image: Artist's impression of the pulsar and its companion star, which is distorted by tidal forces, compared in size to the Earth-Moon system. (B. Knispel, C. Clark (@mpi_grav@academiccloud.social)/NASA)

#OTD #Astrophysics #Pulsar #FermiLAT #CitizenScience #OpenAccess

New @LIGO@scicomm.xyz Magazine out now!

This special, extended edition celebrates ten years of gravitational-wave astronomy. It shares memories and reflections on the first detection, reports on the latest catalogue (GWTC-4.0) and the most massive black hole binary merger yet, and much more.

➡️ https://ligo.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/LIGO-magazine-issue27.pdf [pdf]

➡️ https://ligo.org/magazine/

#LIGOMagazine #SciComm #GravitationalWaves #10YearsGW

✨ Exciting news to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of gravitational-wave astronomy 🎂

A recent gravitational-wave signal, known as GW250114, is the clearest one observed to date.

Its source and intrinsic signal strength are quite similar to those of the first-ever signal, GW150914, which was observed almost exactly 10 years ago.

However, improvements of the detectors, waveform models, and analysis methods over the past decade have resulted in a much clearer detection.

This allows scientists to conduct some of the most stringent tests of general relativity and confirm Hawking's black hole area theorem.

For the first time, researchers have identified or constrained at least three different gravitational-wave tones during the ringdown. This is the phase in which the remaining black hole settles into its final state right after the merger.

➡️ https://www.aei.mpg.de/1286736/ten-years-of-gravitational-wave-astronomy-and-the-clearest-signal-yet

#BlackHoles #GeneralRelativity #GW250114 #GW150914 #10YearsGW
#Astronomy #Astrophysics

Doubling the gravitational-wave transient catalogue – LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA researchers at the @mpi_grav@academiccloud.social and at @unihannover@wisskomm.social make significant contributions to detect and analyze new gravitational-wave candidates

ℹ️ https://www.aei.mpg.de/1276428/doubling-the-gravitational-wave-transient-catalogue

The @LIGO@scicomm.xyz Virgo KAGRA (LVK) collaboration has today released new results from the first part of the fourth observing run (O4a). The scientists discovered 128 new gravitational-wave signals in the data, all of which originated from mergers of black hole and neutron star–black hole binaries.

Movie: I. Markin (@unipotsdam@wisskomm.social), T. Dietrich (@unipotsdam@wisskomm.social and @mpi_grav@academiccloud.social), H. Pfeiffer (@mpi_grav@academiccloud.social).

#GWTC4 #GravitationalWaves #Astrophysics #Science #BlackHoles #NeutronStars