This international effort, conducted with the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa and led by astronomers at Swinburne and Monash Universities, includes three studies published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Together, these works offer new insights into the universe’s most massive black holes, how they shaped the Universe, and the cosmic architecture they left behind.
Using the pulsar timing array, the researchers constructed a highly detailed gravitational wave map, improving upon existing methods. This map revealed an intriguing anomaly – an unexpected hotspot in the signal that suggests a possible directional bias.
“The presence of a hotspot could suggest a distinct gravitational wave source, such as a pair of black holes billions of times the mass of our Sun,” Lead author of one of the studies, and OzGrav researcher Rowina Nathan said.
With continued work using the MeerKAT array and plans to better understand the pulsar network and gravitational wave signal, researchers aim to refine the map of the gravitational wave background and verify the underlying cosmic structure.
Lead author for the other two papers and a researcher at OzGrav and Swinburne, Dr Matt Miles, says the research opens new pathways for understanding the universe that we live in.
