Hundreds of Black Holes to be Discovered in LIGO Mission

Hundreds of black holes are just waiting to be discovered as part of an upcoming LIGO mission, scientists say, a breakthrough study that may help to unlock the secrets of the Universe.

Though black holes cannot be seen, researchers from Cardiff University hope that the LIGO detectors - which act like giant microphones - will locate remnants of black hole collisions.

"The rapid spinning of black holes will cause the orbits to wobble, just like the last wobbles of a spinning top before it falls over. These wobbles can make the black holes trace out wild paths around each other, leading to extremely complicated gravitational-wave signals. Our model aims to predict this behavior and help scientists find the signals in the detector data," lead researcher Dr. Mark Hannam said in a statement.

Supermassive black holes - extremely dense objects that exert huge gravitational forces - are thought to be at the center of most large galaxies, including ours.

By searching for the faint ripples of collisions that occurred millions of years ago, the detectors, known as Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatories (LIGO), may be able to reveal the secrets of how black holes orbit into each other and collide.

LIGO - which will be up and running in the United States in 2015 - is based on a theoretical model devised by the Cardiff team of how black holes distort waves of energy around them when they collide.

"Sometimes the orbits of these spinning black holes look completely tangled up, like a ball of string," Hannam explained. "But if you imagine whirling around with the black holes, then it all looks much clearer, and we can write down equations to describe what is happening."

This "spotter's guide," as scientists call it, has already been programmed into the computer codes that LIGO scientists are preparing to use, but it still requires additional work. So far only the precision effects that occur when the black holes spiral towards each other have been factored in. The team still needs to included what happens to those spins when the objects collide.

"For years we were stumped on how to untangle the black-hole motion. Now that we've solved that, we know what to do next," Hannam concluded.

The study is described further in the journal Physical Review Letters.