THE ARC CENTRE of excellence FOR GRAVITATIONAL WAVE DISCOVERY
A new window of discovery.
A new age of gravitational wave astronomy.
A new age of gravitational wave astronomy.
One hundred years ago, Albert Einstein produced one of the greatest intellectual achievements in physics, the theory of general relativity. In general relativity, spacetime is dynamic. It can be warped into a black hole. Accelerating masses create ripples in spacetime known as gravitational waves (GWs) that carry energy away from the source. Recent advances in detector sensitivity led to the first direct detection of gravitational waves in 2015. This was a landmark achievement in human discovery and heralded the birth of the new field of gravitational wave astronomy. This was followed in 2017 by the first observations of the collision of two neutron-stars. The accompanying explosion was subsequently seen in follow-up observations by telescopes across the globe, and ushered in a new era of multi-messenger astronomy.
The mission of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) is to capitalise on the historic first detections of gravitational waves to understand the extreme physics of black holes and warped spacetime, and to inspire the next generation of Australian scientists and engineers through this new window on the Universe.
OzGrav is funded by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council Centres of Excellence funding scheme, and is a partnership between Swinburne University (host of OzGrav headquarters), the Australian National University, Monash University, University of Adelaide, University of Melbourne, and University of Western Australia, along with other collaborating organisations in Australia and overseas.
OzGrav scientists and engineers are developing state of the art instrumentation for Advanced LIGO, the Square Kilometre Array and the next generation of gravitational wave detectors |
OzGrav researchers sift through Petabytes of data to search for gravitational waves from black holes and neutron stars. |
OzGrav astrophysicists use the gravitational waves detected by advanced LIGO and the SKA to probe the Universe in new and unique ways. |
RECENT HIGHLIGHTS
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