OzGrav is delighted to congratulate Professor David Blair, one of Australia’s pioneering gravitational-wave physicists, on being appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in the 2026 King’s Birthday Honours.
Professor Blair was recognised for his distinguished service to physics, precision measurement science, gravitational-wave research and scientific education.
A founding figure in Australian gravitational-wave science, Professor Blair has spent decades advancing the technologies and scientific capabilities that helped position Australia as a global contributor to gravitational-wave astronomy. His work has inspired generations of researchers and played a significant role in shaping the field that ultimately led to the first direct detection of gravitational waves in 2015.
Throughout his career, Professor Blair has been a passionate advocate for science education and public engagement, helping to foster a deeper understanding of physics and astronomy among students, researchers and the broader community.
The recognition is a fitting tribute to a remarkable career dedicated to expanding humanity’s understanding of the Universe and advancing Australian scientific excellence.
Congratulations, David, on this well-deserved honour.
White dwarf binary provides unique natural laboratory for extreme physics
An international team led by astronomers at the University of Sydney has uncovered the clearest evidence yet for the origin of an unusual class of cosmic signals. In doing so, they have identified a rare stellar system that is providing scientists with a natural laboratory to study extreme physics.
Using CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope, the team discovered a small, dense star, called a white dwarf, shredding material from its larger, but less dense, companion star. As this material spirals in, it produces powerful bursts of radio waves and X-rays in a cycle that repeats every 1.4 hours.
Lead author and PhD student Kovi Rose from the University of Sydney’s School of Physics and CSIRO said this provides the first confirmed identification of what astronomers call ‘long-period radio transients’: cosmic pulses discovered from just a few remote regions of our galaxy.
“For the first time we have pinpointed the origin of these signals, confirming the source to be a ‘cataclysmic variable’, or an accreting white dwarf star,” said Mr Rose.
“Long-period radio transients have puzzled astronomers for years,” Mr Rose said. “We’ve only found about a dozen, and their origins have been unclear. Now, we’ve been able to show that the source for one of these transients comes from a white dwarf actively pulling material from a companion star.”
A rare and revealing system
The newly identified system, named ASKAP J1745−5051, consists of a white dwarf – a dense stellar remnant roughly the size of Earth but with the mass close to that of the Sun – paired with a larger but lower-mass red dwarf star of about one-tenth the Sun’s mass. The two stars orbit each other extremely closely, completing a full orbit in just over an hour.
As material from the less massive star is drawn towards the white dwarf, it heats up and emits X-rays. At the same time, interactions between the stars’ magnetic fields generate regular radio bursts, meaning the signal occurs at specific intervals.
“These emissions are all tied to the orbital motion of the system,” Mr Rose said. “But interestingly, the radio and X-ray signals don’t peak at the same time, which tells us they’re being produced in different regions of the system.”
The team found that the radio emission likely originates where the magnetic fields of the two stars meet and interact with the charged material being ripped from the companion star, producing tightly beamed bursts of radiation.
Solving a cosmic mystery
Long-period radio transients were initially thought to be slow-spinning neutron stars, known as pulsars. However, current models suggest neutron stars rotating this slowly should not be able to produce such signals.
The new discovery strengthens an alternative explanation: that at least some of these mysterious bursts come from systems of two stars, involving white dwarfs.
“Some similar objects had been linked to binary systems before, but this is the first one where we can clearly see both stars and the accretion process in action,” said Professor Murphy, Head of School at the University of Sydney School of Physics and Chief Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav).
The system is also only the second known long-period radio transient to emit regular X-rays – and the first where the cause of the regularity has been confirmed.
A ‘Rosetta stone’ for future discoveries
This unique system was discovered using the ASKAP radio telescope, owned and operated by CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency. ASKAP’s mix of coverage, resolution, and sensitivity is unparalleled in radio astronomy, allowing for such unusual signals to be detected that would otherwise be missed.
The researchers say that ASKAP J1745-5051 could act as a reference point for understanding other long-period radio transients.
“This system gives us a way to decode these signals. It could help us determine whether other long-period transients are more like pulsars or like white dwarf systems, acting like a stellar Rosetta stone,” said Mr Rose, referring to the archaeological object discovered in Egypt that helped translate ancient hieroglyphics.
The discovery also provides a unique opportunity to study extreme plasma physics and magnetic interactions under conditions that cannot be replicated on Earth.
“These systems are natural laboratories,” Mr Rose said. “They allow us to test our understanding of how matter behaves in strong magnetic fields and under intense gravitational forces.”
Future research
The team plans further observations combining radio, optical and X-ray telescopes to better understand how these emissions are generated and whether similar mechanisms can explain the full population of long-period radio transients.
“Each new discovery is helping us piece together the bigger picture,” Mr Rose said. “We’re only just beginning to understand this new class of cosmic events.”
The international team included astronomers from the United States, China, Canada, Spain, Israel and Australia. The team used CSIRO’s Australia Telescope Compact Array and ASKAP radio telescopes in Australia, the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa, the SOAR and Magellan optical telescopes in Chile, and the space-based Swift (UV/X-ray) and Einstein Probe (X-ray) telescopes.
Media Release prepared by Ivy Shih, Media and PR Adviser | University of Sydney
RESEARCH: Rose, K. et al ‘Periodic radio and X-ray emission from an accreting white dwarf binary’ (Nature Astronomy 2026). DOI: 0.1038/s41550-026-02882-x
Congratulations to OzGrav’s Dr Iris de Ruiter, who has been awarded a prestigious 2026 Gruber Foundation Fellowship.
Each year, The Gruber Foundation (TGF), in collaboration with the International Astronomical Union (IAU), funds a US$ 75,000 fellowship programme for promising early-career astronomers. As in recent years, the Selection Committee has decided to award this year’s fellowship jointly to three outstanding candidates, each receiving US$ 25,000.
Iris de Ruiter is a Dutch astronomer who received her PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 2024. Since November 2024, she has been a postdoctoral researcher with OzGrav at The University of Sydney, Australia. Her research focuses on white dwarf binaries and long-period radio transients. Her project aims to establish and characterize this newly identified class of sources through systematic surveys and multi-wavelength observations, with the goal of uncovering their emission mechanisms and implications for stellar magnetism and compact binary evolution. She plans to use the grant to support research visits, conference participation, and organising a specialist workshop.
The 2026 fellowship recipients also include Ignas Juodžbalis from University of Cambridge and Mor Rozner from the Institute for Advanced Study and University of Cambridge.
The 2026 TGF Selection Committee, consisting of IAU Vice-Presidents Monica Rubio, Gražina Tautvaišienė, and Hyesung Kang (Chair), would like to emphasize the exceptional quality of all applicants.
“The committee was deeply impressed by the quality, originality, and breadth of this year’s applications. The proposals reflect a wide range of topics in modern astrophysics, marked by strong scientific ambition and creativity. The selection process was highly competitive, and we warmly congratulate the awardees while also expressing our sincere appreciation to all applicants for their excellent work.” said Hyesung Kang.
The next call for TGF Fellowship applications is expected to open in September 2026, with a submission deadline of 22 March 2027.
Further information on eligibility and application procedures will be available on the IAU website.
The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration has today released its latest catalog of gravitational-wave detections. The data analysed for this update were collected by the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors and the Virgo detectors. They are the world’s premier observatory of gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of spacetime.
This catalog aggregates hundreds of cosmic collisions between pairs of black holes, each producing a new, heavier black hole. These distant events provide a rich dataset for scientists to map out how the Universe builds black hole systems.
Using the new data, compiled in the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC-5.0), scientists from the LVK collaboration and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) at Monash University, have identified clear evidence that black hole binaries are born in distinct sub-populations. Effectively, different cosmic assembly lines that operate in unique environments.
Project lead, Sharan Banagiri, a Research Fellow from Monash University’s School of Physics and Astronomy and OzGrav, used this data to observe the shared characteristics of colliding black holes and neutron stars.
“This set of nearly 400 gravitational-wave detections from LIGO and Virgo provides us with a clear indication that the binary black hole mergers we see are forming in several different ways. Some might form as one giant cloud of gas that collapses to give two massive stars that then become black holes. Others might be black holes that wander into each other in dense environments called clusters that are packed with stars. While others are the product of a previous generation of mergers between two black holes,” Dr Banagiri said.
The paper, released as a preprint, found that there is a presence of multiple sub-populations of merging black holes that can potentially arise from different formation pathways.
Assistant Professor of physics at Princeton University, Sylvia Biscoveanu, co-author of the study and previously a Fulbright postgraduate scholar at Monash University, commented on the unprecedented scale of the catalog update.
“GWTC-5 represents the largest single increase in the size of the gravitational-wave catalog, including events with remarkable properties such as GW241127, which contains BHs of very different masses with clearly wobbling orbits due to tilted spins. The new catalog also contains the event with the best localisation on the sky to date, GW240615.”
The researchers also found that some of these black holes are spinning very rapidly. These fast spinning black holes have two different sets of masses; the first set are between 10-20 times the sun’s mass and the second set have masses greater than 45 times the sun’s mass.
“One of the most fascinating things we’ve discovered about these new black holes is that they are spinning very fast. The sun rotates once every 25 days. If it became a black hole and started spinning as quickly as the ones we discovered, it would be rotating several thousand times every second. So where do these rapidly-spinning black holes come from? One leading explanation is that they are ‘hierarchical’ products of a previous generation of merger between two black holes,” Dr Banagiri said.
The paper identified that black holes which are hierarchical in origin, are more massive than other black holes nearby. By analysing the new data set, the researchers found that the black holes more massive than 45 times the sun, are more likely to merge with lower mass black holes.
The new dataset will provide rich new information about black holes for astronomers and scientists to research.
Chief Investigator at OzGrav and Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Monash University, Eric Thrane, said this is a milestone as gravitational-wave astronomy transitions from the discovery of individual events to the statistical profiling of cosmic population
“We are no longer just looking at individual anomalies, instead, we are seeing a true kaleidoscope of cosmic collisions. We are pushing the edges of what we know, seeing things that are more massive, spinning faster, and more unusual than ever before,” Professor Thrane said.
An international team of scientists from the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA collaborations, including researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav), has completed one of the most sensitive searches yet for continuous gravitational waves from young supernova remnants.
Neutron stars (NSs) are among the most exotic objects in the Universe. They are born when massive stars die in energetic explosions called core-collapse supernovae. These explosions rip the star apart and leave behind a beautiful diffuse nebula called a supernova remnant.
The supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, one the youngest and brightest known core-collapse supernova remnants in our Galaxy, as seen by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The central white dot is a point-like X-ray source believed to be the neutron star left behind the supernova explosion and known as a ‘Central Compact Object’. Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Meiji Univ./T. Sato et al.; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk.
“These objects are incredibly extreme environments,” said Dr Ornella Piccinni, from the University of the Balearic Islands and Associate Investigator at OzGrav, who led the study while at the Australian National University. “They give us a way to test physics in conditions we can’t reproduce on Earth.”
NSs are also the strongest magnets in the Universe and can rotate astonishingly fast, with some rotating hundreds of times per second. Astrophysical estimates suggest that millions of NS may have formed in our Galaxy. However, only a fraction of neutron stars are observed as pulsars (they emit pulses of light). This lack of observation may be either because their emission beams do not intersect the Earth or because they have become too weak to detect. As a result, most neutron stars remain electromagnetically silent, and their internal properties are largely inaccessible even to the most sensitive telescopes.
“Gravitational-wave signals from neutron stars are incredibly faint, which makes them difficult to detect,” said Dr Ling (Lilli) Sun. “But they carry unique information about the structure of neutron stars.”
Continuous gravitational waves (CWs) provide a new tool to discover previously missed pulsars and unobserved NSs and probe their exotic interiors.
In a recent paper, the team searched for continuous gravitational waves from 15 young to middle-aged supernova remnants, ranging from approximately 40 years old (SN 1987A) to tens of thousands of years old, 14 of which are in our galaxy and one in our neighbouring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The search used eight months of data from May 2023 to Jan 2024 during the first phase of the detectors’ fourth observing run (O4a).
Supernova 1987A is a supernova that was discovered in 1987 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby galaxy. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Mikako Matsuura (Cardiff University), Richard Arendt (NASA-GSFC, UMBC), Claes Fransson (Stockholm University), Josefin Larsson (KTH); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
While transient bursts of gravitational waves are now regularly observed, CWs are much harder to detect because these signals are expected to be far weaker than the bursts seen from neutron star or black hole mergers, often weaker by several orders of magnitude.
But no detection does not mean there are no results.
By measuring how sensitive the search was, the team was able to place the strongest limits so far on how strong these signals could be, improving on previous observing runs. These limits help narrow what scientists think neutron stars can look like, including how “bumpy” they are and how matter behaves under the most extreme conditions in the Universe.
“Even when we don’t see a signal, we’re still learning,” said Yutong (Tracy) Bu from the University of Melbourne, who worked on the analysis. “We can place stronger constraints on what these neutron stars are doing.”
These systems may host young neutron stars where the rotation frequency is still unknown. Their relatively young age implies that the neutron star candidates are more likely to have non-uniform deformations than older ones and emit stronger continuous gravitational waves.
“We’re pushing the sensitivity of these searches further than ever before,” said Dr Piccinni. “Each step brings us closer to a detection.”
These results are the most sensitive broadband frequency searches so far for continuous gravitational waves from supernova remnants.
As data collection continues and sensitivity improves, researchers are closing in on the first detection of continuous gravitational waves — a breakthrough that would open an entirely new way of studying neutron stars.
An international team of scientists from the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA collaborations, including researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav), has shown for the first time that gravitational waves, ripples in space and time produced by some of the most violent events in the Universe, such as the collision of two black holes, can be used to measure and correct the calibration of the detectors that observe them.
The breakthrough comes from the study of two exceptionally strong gravitational-wave signals, known as GW240925 and GW250207, produced by the collisions of pairs of black holes and detected by the twin detectors of the US National Science Foundation Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (NSF LIGO). These events were so strong that they allowed researchers not only to study the black holes that created them, but also to check how accurately the detectors were recording the signals.
“In a way, we are using black holes to help check the accuracy of our detectors. How cool is that!” said Dr Ling (Lilli) Sun from the Australian National University.
Three OzGrav researchers from three different Australian universities played key scientific roles in the study. Dr Ling (Lilli) Sun from the Australian National University provided scientific leadership on the paper, while Mallika Sinha, a PhD student at Monash University, and Dr Yi Shuen Christine Lee, a Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Melbourne, made important contributions to the analysis and interpretation of the results.
From left to right: Dr Ling (Lilli) Sun (Australian National University), Mallika Sinha (Monash University), and Dr Yi Shuen Christine Lee (University of Melbourne). Credit: Carl Knox, OzGrav/Swinburne
The LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA collaboration has now confidently detected more than 200 gravitational-wave signals from merging black holes and neutron stars. Each signal carries information about its source and the extreme physics governing these collisions. Extracting that information requires the detectors to measure gravitational waves with extraordinary precision and to carefully account for any uncertainties in those measurements.
Gravitational waves stretch and squeeze spacetime as they pass through Earth. The detectors measure this by sending laser light down two perpendicular arms and looking for tiny differences in the time it takes the light to travel back and forth. A typical gravitational wave changes the arm length by about one ten-billionth of a billionth of a metre, smaller than the width of a proton.
“Thanks to major upgrades over the past decade, our detectors are now so sensitive that signals from colliding black holes come through loud and clear,” said Dr Sun. “If Einstein’s theory of general relativity is correct, those signals should follow a very specific pattern.”
Turning those minute measurements into a physical gravitational-wave signal requires a detailed model of the detector’s response. This includes accounting for the complex control systems used to keep the instruments stable. Normally, calibration uncertainties are measured and estimated using auxiliary lasers, sensors, and engineering data. However, during the detections of GW240925 and GW250207, the LIGO Hanford detector happened to have a larger calibration error than usual.
According to Dr Sun, “by comparing the predicted signal with what we actually record, we can spot tiny mismatches that sometimes reveal the detector wasn’t perfectly calibrated at the time.”
Because both signals were exceptionally loud, the researchers were able to disentangle the true gravitational-wave signal from the detector’s calibration error, a process known as astrophysical calibration. GW240925 served as a verification case, allowing the team to compare results from astrophysical calibration with data that was later corrected using standard methods.
GW250207, meanwhile, is the second-loudest gravitational-wave event ever observed and provides a unique window into extreme physics. For this event, astrophysical calibration was essential to ensure the data could be trusted at all.
Accurate calibration is critical because even small errors can bias estimates of key source properties, such as the masses of the black holes, whether they are spinning, and where the signal originated in the sky.
“It was simply bad luck that such a loud event was observed while LIGO Hanford was in an unsettled state,” said Mallika Sinha. “As our detectors become more sensitive and we observe more events, situations like this will only become more common. Without astrophysical calibration, we might not be able to reliably analyse these interesting events and miss out on some nifty science.”
The researchers found that GW240925 was produced by black holes around nine and seven times the mass of the Sun, while GW250207 involved black holes roughly 35 and 30 times the Sun’s mass.
“Using three detectors instead of two helps us pinpoint the location of gravitational-wave sources much more precisely, which also means we can better understand the physical properties of the sources themselves,” said Dr Yi Shuen Christine Lee.
“This successful astrophysical calibration using GW240925 and GW250207 is an exciting step forward for gravitational-wave astronomy. It improves our chances for extracting important astrophysical information from gravitational-wave sources, even when traditional detector calibration methods are not accurate or feasible!”
Because of its strength and position in the sky, GW250207 is considered one of the most promising gravitational-wave signals for future measurements of the Hubble constant, although many such “dark siren” events, gravitational-wave signals from black hole mergers that produce no visible light, will be needed to resolve the long-standing tension between different cosmological measurements.
Together, GW240925 and GW250207 mark the first successful tests of astrophysical calibration, a technique that could allow scientists to trust gravitational-wave data even when detectors are in an unsettled state.
As gravitational-wave astronomy moves from discovery to precision science, using the Universe itself to help calibrate our instruments may become an increasingly powerful tool.
Watch the explainer video below:
Media Enquiries
Researchers from the study are available for interview.
For interview requests, additional information, or media enquiries, please contact:
Diana Haikal Senior Communications and Engagement Advisor ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) ozgrav.comms@swin.edu.au
An awe-inspiring new chapter in science engagement has begun, with Professor Matthew Bailes, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery, officially launching Swinburne Virtual Universe.
The space is exactly what it sounds like. A fully immersive room wrapped in more than 100 square metres of high-contrast LED screens, where you’re not just looking at the Universe, you’re inside it.
Visitors can move through a virtual solar system, guided in real time, with 3D visuals built from supercomputer simulations and real astrophysics data. It’s designed to make complex science feel intuitive, and honestly, a bit magical.
“It’s hard to describe that moment,” Professor Bailes said, reflecting on seeing Saturn’s rings stretch across the entire space. “You feel like you can walk along them and look out into infinity. That’s the feeling I want people to experience when they come in here.”
The idea for the Virtual Universe goes back much further. For Bailes, it traces all the way back to watching the Moon landing as a child and the sense of wonder that came with it. That same feeling is what this space is trying to recreate, not just for students, but for anyone who walks through the door.
Early reactions suggest it’s working.
From school students reaching out to grab floating moons, to adults completely absorbed in the experience, the Virtual Universe is already doing what it set out to do, connecting people to science in a way that sticks.
Built in partnership with OzGrav, the facility brings together research, technology and storytelling in one place. It also opens up new opportunities, not just for outreach, but for research translation and creative industries.
Now open, the Virtual Universe is already bringing in schools and the wider community, turning curiosity about space into something people can actually step inside and feel.
An international team of scientists led by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) at Monash University has uncovered evidence of a rare form of exploding star, helping to shed light on one of the most cataclysmic events in the Universe.
At the end of their lives, most massive stars collapse into black holes – objects with gravity so strong that not even light can escape.
Some very massive stars, however, are expected to become so hot that they are blown apart in a pair-instability supernova – an explosion so intense that the star is completely disrupted, leaving behind no black hole.
First predicted in the 1960s, pair-instability supernovae are challenging to distinguish from more common stellar explosions that leave behind black holes.
In a study published in Nature, researchers found that by using gravitational waves – ripples in the fabric of spacetime detected by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observatory network – they were able to measure the properties of black holes and found a “forbidden range” of black-hole masses.
Black holes with masses more than 45 times the mass of the sun are rare because the stars that might otherwise have made them exploded in pair-instability supernovae.
Project lead, Hui Tong, a PhD candidate from OzGrav at Monash University’s School of Physics and Astronomy, said the research found a forbidden mass range where stars seemingly don’t make black holes.
“The observation is well explained by pair instability; there are no stellar-origin black holes in the forbidden zone because stars are undergoing pair-instability supernovae. The only black holes in this mass range are made from merging smaller black holes, rather than directly from stars,” Mr Tong said.
Confirming the existence of this gap would help settle a major question about how the most massive stars live and die, and the origin of black holes.
Project collaborator, Professor Maya Fishbach from the University of Toronto and CITA said the study highlights the potential of gravitational waves to probe the lives, deaths and afterlives of the most massive stars in our Universe.
“We are seeing indirect evidence of one of the most titanic blasts in the cosmos: pair-instability supernovae. At the same time, we are finding that once they are born, black holes can grow via repeated mergers,” said Professor Maya Fishbach.
“It’s a cool result because we are using black holes to learn about the nuclear reactions inside stars,” said Professor Eric Thrane, Chief Investigator at OzGrav.
Congratulations to OzGrav’s Dr Cullan Howlett on being awarded the 2026 Pawsey Medal
Dr Cullan Howlett is one of Australia’s most exceptional cosmologists. His research – focused on assembling the largest and most complete map of our universe ever made – has shaped our understanding of the fundamental forces and ingredients that make up the world around us. He played key roles in the international Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument collaborations, with first-author papers in the top 1% most highly cited of the last decade and contributions to DESI’s recent findings on potential time-varying dark energy, which are among 2024/2025’s most cited physics papers.
He also co-led the discovery of a massive local ‘bubble’ of galaxies called Ho’oleilana. His innovations in combining galaxy clustering and velocity measurements have profoundly influenced the design of current major surveys. Beyond research, he contributes as an editor, advisory committee member, and science communicator. His career exemplifies the scientific excellence, leadership, and impact recognised by the Pawsey Medal.
Australia may be far from the world’s seismic hotspots, but a team from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) at the Australian National University (ANU) is leading a breakthrough that could transform how earthquakes and tsunamis are detected worldwide. With $671,000 in new funding from the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Discovery Projects (DP) scheme, Professor Bram Slagmolen and colleagues are developing technology capable of detecting earthquakes almost as soon as they happen at the speed of light.
When earthquakes strike, devastation can unfold in minutes or even seconds. Current early warning systems, such as those in Japan, rely on networks of seismometers to detect seismic waves. While effective, these systems can only provide limited notice, as seismic waves travel comparatively slowly through the Earth.
Professor Slagmolen explained the stakes “Our work focuses on creating early warning systems that could provide precious seconds for earthquakes and valuable minutes for tsunamis, allowing more time to safeguard lives, halt hazardous activities, and protect vital infrastructure such as power stations and gas pipelines.”
Those seconds matter. Extra lead time could allow high-speed trains to decelerate safely, surgeons to pause delicate procedures, or operators to shut down power grids in controlled ways. For tsunamis, additional minutes could mean entire coastal communities have time to evacuate.
So how does it work? The key lies in detecting prompt elasto-gravity signals, tiny changes in gravity generated the instant a fault ruptures in the Earth. Unlike seismic waves, which move at the speed of sound in rock, gravitational changes propagate at the speed of light.
Professor Robert Ward, OzGrav node leader at ANU, likens it to watching someone swing an axe across a field: you see the movement instantly, but the sound of the strike takes seconds to reach you. The gravitational “signal” arrives first, and with the right sensors, it can be measured before the destructive shaking begins. “Much of this system has been designed and fabricated here at ANU, it’s a huge engineering effort, and now we’re entering the phase of commissioning and testing.”
The team has already built and tested a prototype sensor. Now, they are installing it on a sophisticated seismic isolation platform, similar to those used in gravitational-wave observatories like Virgo in Italy and KAGRA in Japan, to filter out local vibrations and allow the sensor to focus only on gravitational changes.
Although Australia is not earthquake-prone, its scientists are global leaders in gravitational-wave detection, a field that requires ultra-sensitive instruments capable of measuring minuscule distortions in space-time. That expertise provides a unique advantage for tackling the challenge of gravitational earthquake detection.
“Australia may not experience major earthquakes, but we have world-class expertise in gravitational-wave detection, and that makes us uniquely placed to lead this research,” said Ward.
International collaboration is essential to the project’s success. Researchers in Japan and Switzerland are already testing smaller-scale versions of the sensor for both earthquake research and fundamental physics experiments. These partnerships ensure that the technology is not only refined in Australia but also tested in regions where earthquakes are more frequent, accelerating its path toward real-world deployment.
The coming years will focus on commissioning the upgraded sensor system and validating its performance. If successful, the technology could become an integral part of next-generation early warning systems, providing unprecedented speed and reliability.
For Ward, the ultimate goal is clear: “Ultimately, this technology could help solve a global problem: giving communities precious time to prepare before an earthquake or tsunami strikes.”
By uniting physics, engineering, and international cooperation, the ANU-led team is charting a path toward safer, more resilient societies. Their work demonstrates the power of fundamental research to address urgent global challenges.
