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The New Era of Multimessenger Astronomy

Astronomers’ newfound ability to see the same cosmic events in light, particles and gravitational waves – a synthesis called multimessenger astronomy – gives them a fuller picture of some of the universe’s most mysterious phenomena

Ann Finkbeiner

Scientific American, 2018

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Think of an apple. In your mind, you can see its red color, feel its smooth surface, smell its sweet fragrance, take a bite and listen to its crunch. All the signals you perceive originate from the apple: visual, tactile, olfactory, gustatory and auditive. Combine all these senses, and you really know what an apple is. Now imagine you’re an astronomer. You’re no longer trying to understand a piece of fruit, but something far more mysterious, deep in the universe. You can look at this thing through a telescope, but light alone may not suffice to identify it. You need more information, and while you can’t necessarily smell, taste or touch this distant discovery, you can use other “messengers” – such as neutrinos or gravitational waves – coming from the same celestial source. Ann Finkbeiner explains this so-called “multimessenger astronomy” in a fascinating Scientific American article.

Summary

Astronomers use different methods to detect “messengers” that reach Earth from the cosmos.

To study celestial objects and events, astronomers need to detect “messengers,” signals that reach Earth. For the longest time, people observed visible light from the stars using optical telescopes – with photons were the messengers. New methods then allowed astronomers to detect other messengers including neutrinos [electrically neutral elementary particles with very low mass]. In 1987, astronomers detected neutrinos originating from a supernova, the death of a star in a distant galaxy. In 2015, for the first time, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected gravitational waves – distortions in spacetime caused by accelerating masses...

About the Author

Ann Finkbeiner is a science writer based in Baltimore. She specializes in writing about astronomy, cosmology, and the intersection of science and national security. Finkbeiner is co-founder and proud co-proprietor of a group science blog, The Last Word on Nothing.

The New Era of Multimessenger Astronomy

Astronomers’ newfound ability to see the same cosmic events in light, particles and gravitational waves – a synthesis called multimessenger astronomy – gives them a fuller picture of some of the universe’s most mysterious phenomena

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Astronomers use different methods to detect “messengers” that reach Earth from the cosmos.

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