Could planets like Earth and Jupiter be used as ‘laboratories’ to help unlock cosmic mysteries?
- Their magnetospheres may be a way to detect elusive gravitational waves, according to team in Beijing and Hong Kong
- But they say their study should be seen as ‘a starting point for more systematic exploration of the opportunities’
Scientists say planets in our solar system, such as Earth and Jupiter, could be used to detect gravitational waves and better understand cosmic mysteries – from the very early universe to dark matter.
The researchers from the Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology said the magnetospheres of these planets would act like a gigantic observatory.
That is because they would help convert elusive gravitational waves into light particles which could be picked up by specially designed probes in orbit, the team wrote in the peer-reviewed journal Physics Review Letters last month.
They said this innovative approach might lead to the observation of high-frequency gravitational waves, which were potentially produced right after the Big Bang and are impossible to detect with existing ground-based facilities.
“We demonstrate that the nearby planets, such as Earth and Jupiter, can be utilised as a laboratory for detecting the high-frequency gravitational waves,” the researchers wrote.
Gravitational waves are ripples of space-time caused by the most violent processes in the universe. For instance, the collision of two orbiting black holes can release a huge amount of gravitational energy, which propagates in all directions away from the source.
Travelling at the speed of light, these cosmic ripples carry basic information about their origins and the nature of gravity itself.
While Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves, their detection has been notoriously difficult because the waves do not interact much with most matter. Also, they are often weak and only disturb space-time by a barely measurable amount.