New Method May Resolve Difficulty in Measuring Universe's Expansion

Artist's impression of the explosion and burst of gravitational waves emitted when a pair of superdense neutron stars collide. New observations with radio telescopes show that such events can be used to measure the expansion rate of the Universe. Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF.




"The neutron star merger gives us a new way of measuring the Hubble Constant, and hopefully of resolving the problem," said Kunal Mooley, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and Caltech.


When two massive neutron stars collide, they produce an explosion and a burst of gravitational waves. The shape of the gravitational-wave signal tells scientists how "bright" that burst of gravitational waves was. Measuring the "brightness," or intensity of the gravitational waves as received at Earth can yield the distance.

"This is a completely independent means of measurement that we hope can clarify what the true value of the Hubble Constant is," Mooley said.


Radio observations of a jet of material ejected in the aftermath of the neutron-star merger were key to allowing astronomers to determine the orientation of the orbital plane of the stars prior to their merger, and thus the "brightness" of the gravitational waves emitted in the direction of Earth. This can make such events an important new tool for measuring the expansion rate of the Universe. Credit: Sophia Dagnello, NRAO/AUI/NSF.

"In order to use the gravitational waves to measure the distance, we needed to know that orientation," said Adam Deller, of Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.

Over a period of months, the astronomers used the radio telescopes to measure the movement of a superfast jet of material ejected from the explosion. "We used these measurements along with detailed hydrodynamical simulations to determine the orientation angle, thus allowing use of the gravitational waves to determine the distance," said Ehud Nakar from Tel Aviv University.


"We think that 15 more such events that can be observed both with gravitational waves and in great detail with radio telescopes, may be able to solve the problem," said Kenta Hotokezaka, of Princeton University. "This would be an important advance in our understanding of one of the most important aspects of the Universe," he added.



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