The Galaxy's Spin Is Hiding in the Hum of Gravitational Waves

A new study by LISA has revealed that the Milky Way may well be lopsided! (Credit : NASA)

We are used to thinking of gravitational waves as messengers from catastrophes in space, the ringing of spacetime after black holes collide for example. But our own Galaxy hums with a fainter, steadier signal, a chorus of millions of unseen binary stars. A new study has found that this hum carries a hidden fingerprint of the Milky Way's spin, and that if a future space mission ignores it, our picture of the Galaxy itself could come out subtly wrong.

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