COSMOLOGY: GRAVITATIONAL RIPPLES COULD HELP CRACK THE UNIVERSE'S SECRETS

New findings provide evidence of a background hum’ produced by low-frequency gravitational waves rippling across spacetime

An international team of scientists has found evidence that suggests Earth, and indeed everything in the Universe, is afloat on a constantly rippling sea of low-frequency gravitational waves.

The findings, announced in a series of papers published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters were made by the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), a team of researchers from more than 50 institutions in the US and abroad. Together, the papers provide the first evidence of a gravitational wave background - essentially, a soup of spacetime distortions that pervade the entire Universe.

"This is the first-ever evidence for the gravitational wave background. We've opened a new window of observation on the Universe," said NANOGrav scientist Dr Chiara Mingarelli.

Gravity waves were first predicted by Albert Einstein in 1916, but their existence wasn't confirmed until 2015 when they were first detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO).