Astronomers are now potentially doubting how galaxies are formed including the mechanisms of black holes based on a research spanning 11 years about the detection of gravitational waves regarding Einstein's theory of relativity some 100 years back.
The results of this new study reveals how astronomers pushed the limits of the Parkes Radio Telescope located in New South Wales in Australia in order to detect a background "rumbling" of waves that are supposed to manifest from the merging of galaxies across deep space. Unfortunately, scientists reveal that they still were not detected.
According to lead researcher of the study, Ryan Shannon from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation of Australia, it seems to be all quiet on the cosmic front. He noted that for this study, the team pushed the telescopes of the Parkes Observatory to their limits to gain results for this cosmic search in all fields of physics, to further understand how galaxies and black holes work.
Traditionally, galaxies are believed to grow through merging with other galaxies where larger galaxies are ought to possess a supermassive black holes in its center, that can create gravitational forces to attract galaxies to merge with each other.
With this cosmic phenomenon, Einstein's theory of relativity is expected to take place where two cosmic objects will be inevitably reeled into the black hole, sending gravitational ripples across deep space, and warping space-time in the universe.
Scientists have tested this theory with models and data but actually detecting these gravitational waves directly, currently elude astronomers.
In this new study, the team examined extremely regular signals of millisecond pulsars, acting like atomic clocks in space during an 11 year span to gain evidence of gravitational waves that changes the time when the pulsar's signals arrive on Earth.
Researchers believe that the gravitational waves that pass through Earth and a millisecond pulsar apparently squeezes and stretches time and space, that changes the distance between each signal by roughly 10 meters changing the time the signals arrive.
Scientists are speculating how there could be a myriad reasons why these waves have not yet been detected, suspecting that black holes merge together very quickly, where there is only a small amount of time to generate gravitational waves.
They also note that the failure to detect these waves via pulsar timing techniques has no implication on other research about higher frequency gravitational waves created by other cosmic events like neutron stars. This new study is published in the journal Science.