Gravitational waves provide dose of reality about extra dimensions

While last year's discovery of gravitational waves from colliding neutron stars was earth-shaking, it won't add extra dimensions to our understanding of the universe—not literal ones, at least.

University of Chicago astronomers found no evidence for extra spatial dimensions to the universe based on the gravitational wave data. Their research, published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, is one of many papers in the wake of the extraordinary announcement last year that LIGO had detected a neutron star collision.

The first-ever detection of gravitational waves in 2015, for which three physicists won the Nobel Prize last year, was the result of two black holes crashing together. Last year, scientists observed two neutron stars collide. The major difference between the two is that astronomers could see the aftermath of the neutron star collision with a conventional telescope, producing two readings that can be compared: one in gravity, and one in electromagnetic (light) waves.

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Credit: Courtesy of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center CI Lab

In new study, UChicago astronomers find no evidence for extra spatial dimensions to the universe based on gravitational wave data.

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ESA’s LISA Pathfinder lifted off 3 December on a Vega rocket from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on its way to demonstrate technology for observing gravitational waves from space.

Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of spacetime, predicted a century ago by Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, published on 2 December 1915.