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How gravitational waves could solve some of the Universe’s deepest mysteries

With the first detections behind them, researchers have set their sights on ambitious scientific quarry.
  1. Davide Castelvecchi
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In the mid-1980s, Bernard Schutz came up with a new solution to one of astronomy’s oldest problems: how to measure the distance from Earth to other objects in the cosmos. For generations, researchers have relied on an object’s brightness as a rough gauge for its distance. But this approach carries endless complications. Dim, nearby stars, for example, can masquerade as bright ones that are farther away.

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Nature 556, 164-168 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-04157-6

See Editorial ‘How gravitational waves might help fundamental cosmology’

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 13 June 2018: An earlier version of this article incorrectly described Ilya Mandel as a LIGO theorist.

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