Astronomers have found a background din of exceptionally long-wavelength gravitational waves pervading the cosmos. The cause? Probably supermassive black hole collisions, but more exotic options can’t be ruled out.

  • PhoenxBlue@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Without reading the article, is this just a new discovery that was always there? Or is this a new sound that just appeared on the radar?

    • FLemmingO@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I read a similar article yesterday stating this was a conclusion recently arrived at after of decades of collecting and reviewing data on the distance between our telescopes and sets of “calibration” quasars and calculating differences in the actual and expected distances over time.

    • Gamera8ID@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Always there. Here’s an ELI5 from Bing:

      The article is about a very quiet sound that comes from space. The sound is made by things that are very big and heavy, like giant balls of fire or holes that suck everything in. The sound is so quiet that we can’t hear it, but we can use special machines to find it.

      The article says that this sound is all around us, and it comes from different places in space. Some places are very far away, like other stars or other worlds. Some places are closer, like our big family of stars. The article also says that this sound can help us learn more about space and how it works.

      The article is very cool because it shows that there are many things in space that we don’t see, but we can find them by listening to the sounds they make.

      • macarthur_park@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’m really not a fan of using AI to summarize scientific concepts. I’ve messed around with having chatGPT explain concepts in my area of research. Sometimes it’s spot on, scarily so. Other times it’s hilariously wrong. The problem is it sounds equally confident in both cases, so it’s impossible to tell if the AI is hallucinating if you aren’t familiar with the subject matter.

    • macarthur_park@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I would recommend just reading the article. Quanta magazine generally does an excellent job of explaining new research results in a way that’s accessible to the general public without using the hyperbolic, misleading, or outright wrong language that often shows up in shoddy science reporting.

    • Roberto@toast.ooo
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      1 year ago

      The discovery is new, why not just read the article instead of relying on some AI bullshit?