Could gravitational waves reveal how fast our universe is expanding? Signals from rare black hole-neutron star pairs could pinpoint rate at which universe is growing, researchers say

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Now scientists from MIT and Harvard University have proposed a more accurate and independent way to measure the Hubble constant, using gravitational waves emitted by a relatively rare system: a black hole-neutron star binary, a hugely energetic pairing of a spiraling black hole and a neutron star. A new wave In 2014, before LIGO made the first detection of gravitational waves, Vitale and his colleagues observed that a binary system composed of a black hole and a neutron star could give a more accurate distance measurement, compared with neutron star binaries. The researchers simulated a variety of systems with black holes, including black hole-neutron star binaries and neutron star binaries. Vitale says. So far, people have focused on binary neutron stars as a way of measuring the Hubble constant with gravitational waves, Vitale says.

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