Giant Gravitational Wave Detectors Could Hear Murmurs From Across Universe

sciencehabit writes: Just 5 years ago, physicists opened a new window on the universe when they first detected gravitational waves, ripples in space itself set off when massive black holes or neutron stars spiral together. Even as discoveries pour in, researchers are already planning bigger, more sensitive detectors. And a Ford versus Ferrari kind of rivalry has emerged, with scientists in the United States simply proposing detectors 10 times bigger than the ones they have now, and researchers in Europe pursuing a more radical design that would combine six detectors in a single underground observatory. Researchers say detectors 10 times more sensitive than the ones they have now could detect all black hole mergers within the observable universe and spot hundreds of mergers of neutron stars, laying bare the nature of the ultradense matter in neutron stars. But, it's early days for the U.S. project, which is called the Cosmic Explorer, and the European project, which is known as the Einstein Telescope.

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