Scientists have been able to detect the presence of gravitational waves since 2015, when the first instruments capable of doing so were set up. However, these instruments capture many other signals as well. Sometimes these signals’ sources are easy to identify—perhaps there was a small earthquake, or an airplane passed overhead—but some of the collected data have remained mysterious.
Recent work co-led by Nicolas Yunes has dealt a heavy blow to one interesting hypothesis: that clumps of dark matter passing through Earth are responsible for some of the enigmatic “glitches” found in the data.
The team examined data collected by gravitational wave detectors located in Louisiana and Washington state.
Yunes, a professor of physics and an affiliate professor of astronomy who specializes in general relativity and gravitation, explained that whenever two massive objects—say, two black holes or two neutron stars—collide, that event will produce vibrations in gravity that travel, at the speed of light, in all directions away from the source. “They eventually hit Earth, and when they hit Earth, they produce a signal in these ‘LIGO’ instruments,” he said.