I made this website for the MeerKAT PTA. Check it out! mpta-gw.github.io

When we started MSP precision timing with MeerKAT in 2018, we knew it would be a fantastic telescope for a pulsar timing array, but did not know when it would become sensitive to gravitational waves. The timing baseline with MeerKAT would always be much shorter than other established PTAs.

Some of the pulsars are the same, but most of ours are in the Southern Hemisphere where NANOGrav struggles to look!

We use similar techniques, but a different telescope (the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa)

New physics would be amazing! But it might still be a ways away

New map of the universe uses gravitational waves to reveal hidden black holes and cosmic structure An international study led by astronomers from Swinburne University of Technology has created the most detailed maps of gravitational waves across the universe to date.

phys.org/news/2024-12...

Yep! There are a bunch of collaborations across the world searching for gravitational waves in this way, ours is among the youngest and this is our first search!

Our findings do broadly agree with NANOGrav though!

MOAR EVIDENCE FOR THE GRAVITATIONAL WAVE BACKGROUND!

Using MeerKAT (super sensitive telescope array) the MPTA team have also found supporting evidence (with their assumptions and models) of the GWB that other PTAs announced last year. This is further independent verification!

The Universe rattles!

To map the vibration of the universe, astronomers built a detector the size of the galaxy A new effort to map the rumblings in spacetime caused by enormous black hole collisions paints a surprisingly loud and lopsided picture of the universe.

Here's the research!
academic.oup.com/mnras/advanc...

academic.oup.com/mnras/advanc...

academic.oup.com/mnras/advanc...
(This one led by @pinkastrophysicist.bsky.social and Kathrin Grunthal!)

And here's a @theconversation.com article I wrote about it!

theconversation.com/to-map-the-v...

For the past few years I've been leading the first gravitational wave searches with the MeerKAT Pulsar Timing Array (mpta-gw.github.io/index.html).

It's been an incredibly rewarding experience, and today the research is published!

A graphic comparing gravitational wave background sources. The left shows a black hole binary and the right shows some bubbles. The text on the left reads "SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE BINARIES Extraordinarily massive black holes in the center of galaxies orbiting eachother, GW Signal: Anisotropic Different in different directions Allows us to study: Galaxy formation, mass distribution of Universe, gravity" The text on the right reads "PRIMORDIAL UNIVERSE PHYSICS Colisions between 'bubbles' in the hot, dense, 'boiling' early Universe soup *+ GW Signal: Isotropic - Same in all directions Allows us to study: The Big Bang, early Universe, particle physics"

What generates the gravitational waves that make up the background? It is probably supermassive black-hole binaries and/or early Universe physics. We don't know yet but it is likely a combination of both! 💥

It's paper release day tomorrow! Excited to share with you all!