Astronomers found NOTHING. And that’s exciting. #gravitationalwaves

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]Astronomers went looking for something, and they found nothing. And that is really exciting. Let me explain. OzGrav researchers, part of the LIGO-Virgo-Kagra collaboration, went searching for something called continuous gravitational waves. Unlike the loud gravitational waves produced by crashing black holes, continuous gravitational waves are extremely faint and far weaker in comparison. And they could be produced by neutron stars, the incredibly dense leftovers of exploded stars. If a neutron star is shaped more like a slightly beaten-up rugby ball compared to say a perfect sphere, even with tiny distortions, it should create a steady gravitational wave as it spins.

[00:00:37]To search for these gravitational waves, researchers focused on 15 supernova remnants where massive stars have recently died, cosmically speaking.

[00:00:45]These remnants are young enough, formed within the last few thousand years, that any neutron stars inside them might still be uneven, making them promising candidates for continuous gravitational waves. And when they searched, they found nothing, which is great. From the search, we can place the strongest limits yet on how distorted these neutron stars could be, meaning that the neutron stars they studied are almost perfectly symmetric and not beaten-up rugby balls. And it lets us know more about how loud their gravitational waves are expected to be, allowing us to refine our search. As detectors improve and more data rolls in, the chance of finally detecting continuous gravitational waves grows. We're still listening, and every non-detection still brings us closer to finally hearing the universe hum.