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Re:The Nanohertz Gravitational-Wave Detection Explained [Ill... by jack-bodine on Sunday August 13, 2023 @09:59AM (#37110110)
If gravitational waves can be detected by looking at pulsars, then what is the purpose of LIGO and ground-based gravitational wave observatories? Is there any difference in the waves detected by LIGO and those from observing pulars?
Re:The Nanohertz Gravitational-Wave Detection Explained [Ill... by _Microft on Sunday August 13, 2023 @10:17AM (#37110257)
LIGO detects gravitational waves in the frequency range of hundreds of Hertz (10^2 Hz), which are produced in the last moments of the in-spiraling of merging neutron stars or blackholes.

Nanohertz are 10^-9 Hz which relate to a rotational period of decades of years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational-wave_astronomy

Re:The Nanohertz Gravitational-Wave Detection Explained [Ill... by magicalhippo on Sunday August 13, 2023 @10:16AM (#37110235)
As mentioned in the sibling comment, different frequencies means probing different things.

I found this talk[1] rather nice to explain the NANOGrav experiment, and at 6:45 there's a very nice plot that shows where NANOGrav fits in compared to the other gravitational wave experiments and which type of sources the various experiments can probe.

[1]: https://pirsa.org/20100068

Re:The Nanohertz Gravitational-Wave Detection Explained [Ill... by venusenvy47 on Sunday August 13, 2023 @10:03AM (#37110134)
Those two methods observe waves of much different wavelength/frequency, and the mechanisms that create such different wavelengths are assumed to be different. So cosmologists are studying different things by looking at different wavelengths.
Re:The Nanohertz Gravitational-Wave Detection Explained [Ill... by Cerium on Sunday August 13, 2023 @12:35PM (#37111493)
For one we didn't have a way to measure the speed of gravitational waves before [1].

[1] https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/622729/did-ligo-...