<keyword id="20929406" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="NASA-astronaut" source="keywords">NASA astronaut</keyword> <keyword id="21976788" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Butch-Wilmore" source="keywords">Butch Wilmore</keyword> recently encountered a baffling situation aboard the <keyword id="19985509" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="International-Space-Station" source="keywords">International Space Station</keyword> (ISS) when he reported a strange, <keyword id="23007593" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="rhythmic-noise" source="keywords">rhythmic noise</keyword> coming from the Boeing <keyword id="21550667" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Starliner-spacecraft" source="keywords">Starliner spacecraft</keyword>. The incident, which occurred just days before the uncrewed Starliner was scheduled to return to Earth, has left both Wilmore and NASA engineers puzzled.<br /><br />On Saturday, Wilmore radioed <keyword id="23007592" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Mission-Control" source="keywords">Mission Control</keyword> at Johnson Space Center in Houston, describing the noise as a "pulsating" or "sonar-like ping" that he could hear coming from the Starliner's internal speaker. Despite initial difficulty in picking up the sound, Mission Control eventually confirmed hearing it. "Butch, that one came through," they responded after the second attempt.<br /><div type="twitter" handle="ajtourville" handlename="ajtourville" favoritecount="0" retweetcount="0" id="1830256447583916110"></div>The noise, which repeated at regular intervals, was recorded by Wilmore and sent to the ground team for analysis. While the source of the sound remains unidentified, Wilmore humorously encouraged the engineers to "scratch your heads" and figure out what could be causing it.<br /><br />The Boeing Starliner has been docked at the ISS since June, with Wilmore and fellow astronaut <keyword id="21544825" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sunita-Williams" source="keywords">Sunita Williams</keyword> initially on a one-week mission that has since been extended due to technical issues, including helium leaks and thruster malfunctions. These delays have pushed their return to Earth to February 2025, with the pair now set to travel back in a <keyword id="21556038" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="SpaceX-Dragon-capsule" source="keywords">SpaceX Dragon capsule</keyword> instead of the Starliner.<br />  <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="111357134" title="Boeing Starliner with Sunita Williams onboard could wait months in space before return as NASA mulls extending mission duration" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div>The mystery noise has sparked curiosity and concern as the spacecraft prepares for its unmanned return journey to Earth. NASA has yet to provide a definitive explanation, but the investigation continues as engineers work to ensure the Starliner’s safe return.<br /><br />The spacecraft is expected to land in the New Mexico desert as early as Friday, marking a crucial step in Boeing’s ongoing efforts to certify the Starliner for regular crewed missions. Meanwhile, Wilmore and Williams remain focused on their extended mission aboard the ISS, continuing their vital work on scientific experiments and maintenance tasks while awaiting their eventual return to Earth.<br />  <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="112805908" title="How will Sunita Williams’ body have changed when she returns from space in February 2025?" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div><br />

Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore’s Boeing spacecraft was giving off a strange, pulsating “sonar-like” pings

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Brown noise has a low, natural sound, so many people find it easier on the ear than white noise.</li><li>Examples of brown noise include rushing waterfalls or rivers, heavy rainfall, and rumbling thunder.</li></ul><p>You might already be familiar with <a href="https://www.insider.com/guides/health/white-noise-for-sleep" target="_blank" rel="noopener">white noise</a>, if you prefer the sound of a whirring fan to block out distractions at work. Maybe you even use pink noise, like the gentle crash of ocean waves against the shore, to get to sleep. </p><p>But there's another frequency to try: brown noise, also called Brownian noise or red noise, which emphasizes lower-frequency sounds. It has the deepest intensity of all noises and sounds like a low roar or rumbling. </p><p>Here's what to know about brown noise and how it could help improve your concentration and focus. </p><h2>Brown noise vs. other noise types</h2><p>It might sound strange to think of noises as having "colors," but the <a href="https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/noise/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">color of a certain noise</a> is based on its frequency. </p><p>In fact, they were named based on the order of colors in a rainbow. Like the lowest frequencies of visible light, the lowest frequencies of sound are red — they're just usually called "brown" because they closely resemble <a href="https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/noise/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Brownian motion</a>. The highest frequencies of sound are violet. </p><p>White noise lies smack in the middle, with an equal volume of all frequencies, but it's not a sound you'll find in nature. <a href="https://www.insider.com/guides/health/white-noise-for-sleep" target="_blank" rel="noopener">White noises</a> are usually man-made and familiar, like radio static, a whirring fan, or humming AC units.</p><p>Like <a href="https://www.sleepfoundation.org/noise-and-sleep/white-noise" target="_blank" rel="noopener">white noise</a>, brown noise contains all frequencies. But it places a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8838436/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">larger emphasis</a> on lower frequencies, so higher pitched sounds are quieter and low tones are louder.</p><p>Brown noise sounds a little less "'sharp" than white noise because it has rounder, more soothing characteristics, says <a href="https://amysarow.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. Amy Sarow</a>, clinical audiologist at Michigan Ear Institute.</p><p>Examples of brown noise include: </p><ul><li>Thunder</li><li>Crashing waves</li><li>Heavy rain</li><li>Strong waterfalls</li><li>A shower</li></ul><p>Other kinds of noise: </p><ul><li><a href="https://www.sleepfoundation.org/noise-and-sleep/pink-noise-sleep" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Pink noise</strong></a> falls between white and red (brown) noise. It places a larger emphasis on high frequencies than brown noise, but less than white noise. You'll find plenty of examples of pink noise in nature, like wind blowing through trees, low waves, or steady rainfall. </li><li><strong>Blue noise</strong> has high frequencies that come in a little louder than low frequencies. It sounds something like a hissing water spray. </li><li><strong>Violet, or purple noise</strong> is the exact opposite of brown noise, with louder high frequencies than low frequencies. Violet noise sounds something like high-pitched TV static.</li></ul><h2>What are the benefits of brown noise?</h2><p>Brown noise may sound a little "rougher" than other noises, but it can still have a calming effect. </p><ul><li><strong>It could help lull you to sleep: </strong>Rhythmic brown noises like <a href="https://ssri.psu.edu/news/buxton-quoted-reader-digest-article-sleep-sounds" target="_blank" rel="noopener">crashing waves</a> and heavy rain may help <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8838436/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lower your heart rate and calm your breathing</a> so sleep comes more easily.</li><li><strong>It can aid your concentration and focus.</strong> Brown noise may have a positive impact on your working memory because it <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7986458/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">increases the firing rate of neurons in your brain</a>. This promotes quicker access to stored information, Sarow says. In theory, it may help improve attention span, which could have <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7986458/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">benefits for people living with ADHD</a>. </li><li><strong>It can help cut down on distractions. </strong>Using a brown noise machine is a great way to drown out distracting noises so you can focus while working, says <a href="https://www.understood.org/blog/authors/andy-kahn/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Andrew Kahn</a>, licensed psychologist and Senior Subject Matter Expert at <a href="https://www.understood.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Understood.org</a>. </li><li><strong>It can help promote relaxation.</strong> The sound of ocean waves, for example, <a href="https://phys.org/news/2018-05-evidence-ocean-stress-calm.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">may reduce stress and help create a calm environment</a>. The rhythmic sound of rain <a href="https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/sciencecommunication/2019/08/27/why-do-people-sleep-better-when-it-rians/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">may also help relax your brain</a>.</li><li><strong>It may help mask </strong><a href="https://www.insider.com/guides/health/conditions-symptoms/ringing-in-ears" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>tinnitus</strong></a><strong>.</strong> Many people with tinnitus, a condition that causes a constant ringing in your ears, <a href="https://www.tinnitusjournal.com/articles/effects-of-tinnitus-retraining-therapy-with-different-colours-of-sound-8932.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">prefer the "softer" sounds of brown noise</a> over the sharper frequencies found in white noise, Sarow says. Depending on the severity of your tinnitus, brown noise may reduce the ringing, or eliminate it altogether.</li></ul><h2>Where can you find brown noise?</h2><p>You no longer need to purchase a CD or <a href="https://www.insider.com/guides/home/best-sound-machine" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sound machine</a> to play soothing sounds as you fall asleep at night — though of course you can, if you prefer. You'll find plenty of free playlists on YouTube and elsewhere across the internet. You can also use your phone or other device to download sound apps. </p><p>Apps to try include: </p><ul><li><a href="https://www.calm.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener sponsored">Calm</a></li><li><a href="https://www.bettersleep.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener sponsored">BetterSleep</a></li><li><a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.metapps.sleepsounds&amp;hl=en_US&amp;gl=US" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener sponsored">Sleep Sounds</a></li></ul><h3>Headphones or speakers? </h3><p>In a noisy environment, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/best-noise-cancelling-headphones" target="_blank" rel="noopener">headphones</a> can help minimize distractions and improve <a href="https://www.insider.com/guides/health/mental-health/how-to-focus" target="_blank" rel="noopener">your focus when studying and working</a>. But if you need help stimulating your brain while working at home and don't want to wear headphones all day, you might prefer to use <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/best-speakers" target="_blank" rel="noopener">speakers</a> rather than wear headphones for several hours in a row. </p><p>Since brown noise doesn't fluctuate in pitch like regular music, try to <a href="https://deafblind.org.uk/6-simple-ways-to-check-if-your-headphones-are-too-loud/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">keep the sound no louder than speaking volume</a>, especially if you plan to listen to it throughout the day. </p><p>If you can still hear the sound when you hold your headphones at arm's length, you might want to consider turning it down. Since speakers don't play directly into your eardrums, you can get away with a slightly higher volume.</p><p>When it comes to <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/tinnitus/symptoms-causes/syc-20350156" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tinnitus</a>, feel free to use either headphones or speakers — with tinnitus, what matters most is <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/tinnitus/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20350162" target="_blank" rel="noopener">suppressing the ringing in your ears</a>. Sometimes all it takes is a bit of constant background noise, but if your <a href="https://www.insider.com/guides/health/conditions-symptoms/ringing-in-ears" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tinnitus</a> persists, headphones may do a better job of keeping the ringing at bay than speakers. </p><h2>Insider's takeaway</h2><p>Research on brown noise remains limited, but existing evidence suggests it may have potential to help improve focus, concentration, and sleep — <a href="https://www.insider.com/guides/health/mental-health/adult-adhd-symptoms" target="_blank" rel="noopener">especially if you live with ADHD</a>.</p><p>Ocean waves, waterfalls, and thunder are just a few examples of soothing brown noise sounds, but if those aren't your jam, you can also try listening to straight static frequencies. </p><p>Many apps and internet playlists even let you mix and match different sounds and frequency strengths to make a unique sound that works for you. </p>

If you love the sound of thunder or crashing waves, brown noise may help you focus or get to sleep

<p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/one-planet"></a></p><div type="image" title="shiny steel propeller with loops for blades on the back of a ship" height="1366" width="1500" msid="99622436" hostid="261"></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>The propellers of the world's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ships-spain-offload-liquefied-natural-gas-lng-europe-energy-crisis-2022-10">ships</a> and boats create a constant drone that disrupts <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/dolphin-eats-venomous-sea-snakes-on-gopro-video-puzzling-scientists-2022-8">ocean life</a>.</li><li>New propeller designs based on loops could one day quiet that drone and be more fuel efficient.</li><li>Sharrow Marine sells them for small boats but would need to scale up to reach the shipping industry.</li></ul><p>Imagine you're a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/video-orcas-kill-great-white-shark-eat-liver-south-africa-2022-7">whale</a>. You spend your entire life in the open water. You can see well enough, but you mostly listen.</p><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/whales-kim-kardashian-vocal-fry-hunt-deep-sea-study-dolphins-2023-3">Songs of other whales</a> help you communicate and travel with your pod. Rhythmic waves crashing on distant shores orient you on migrations that span thousands of miles each year.</p><div type="image" title="sperm whale underwater in deep blue ocean" height="1799" width="2399" msid="99622437" hostid="261"></div><p>But a distant drone, like white noise, is starting to obscure the sounds you rely on.</p><p>It's the constant hum of all the cargo, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cruise-liners-elon-musk-spacex-starlink-internet-ships-2023-3">cruise</a>, and charter <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-oil-is-flowing-secret-seas-transfers-china-moscow-europe-2022-8">ships</a> crisscrossing the ocean and trailing the coasts. Their noise is growing more thunderous each year as their propellers blare into the ocean void.</p><p>"A ship traveling from Tokyo to Shanghai is going to have direct sound impacts in that area but could potentially send noise all the way across the ocean to Los Angeles," Ben Halpern, a marine ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told Insider.</p><p>At any given moment, thousands of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/dead-whales-increase-due-to-climate-change-cargo-ship-strikes-2023-2">commercial ships</a> are traveling over the oceans.</p><div type="image" title="China cargo ship Hong Kong harbor" height="3494" width="4658" msid="99622438" hostid="261"></div><p>"You can get quite a substantial hum of all those propellers that can potentially cover up that natural noise," Halpern said.</p><p>It's not just whales that suffer. Many marine creatures rely on sound to communicate, navigate, find food, or avoid predators.</p><p>Research indicates that the overpowering hum of ships can <a href="https://affiliate.insider.com?h=41606ae5fcc3b19d4eca9744907767889a7f671da2edfdea28649219093d2a1d&amp;postID=64344c1632953006541763d1&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fsrep05891%3Forigin%3Dppub">kill off</a> sea-slug larvae, make humpback whales <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0204112">stop singing</a>, and cause schools of bluefin tuna to change direction and become "<a href="https://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v331/p243-253/">uncoordinated</a>." Other studies have found that the temporary disappearance of shipping traffic during COVID-19 lockdowns brought a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-hongkong-dolphins-idINKBN2650B0">resurgence</a> in endangered pink dolphins near Hong Kong and, after 9/11, reduced <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2011.2429">stress</a> among North Atlantic right whales.</p><p>Much of this underwater noise comes from ships' propellers. But it's not from the mechanics of the propeller motors — it's the physics at the tips of the propeller blades.</p><div type="image" title="two workers in yellow hardhats pass a pole up scaffolding beneath a huge ship propeller with spiraling blades larger than the people, attached to a giant red ship" height="1560" width="2081" msid="99622439" hostid="261"></div><p>That's why engineers like Tommy Sebastian, a senior staffer at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, are tinkering with unconventional propeller shapes. New loop-based models are designed to not only reduce noise pollution and help protect marine life but also increase energy efficiency — a win-win-win for the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/record-ocean-temperatures-california-heat-atmospheric-river-storms-santa-cruz-2023-1">oceans</a>, the climate, and the shipping industry.</p><h2><strong>Propellers that close the loop cut out some of the noise</strong></h2><div type="image" title="traditional propeller three white blades on a motor sitting on a table juxtaposed with the same setup with a propeller made of three overlapping loops" height="444" width="1191" msid="99622440" hostid="261"></div><p>When a blade propeller spins in the air (like the one on the left in the above image), it generates regions of high and low pressure that meet at the blade's tip to create a vortex.</p><p>It's these so-called tip vortices that make a lot of noise, both in the air and underwater.</p><p>When you replace the blade with a loop, there's no tip. The high- and low-pressure regions meet along the edge of the loop, distributing the vortices more widely so that they dissipate faster and therefore more quietly.</p><p>That's what Sebastian realized when he put loop propellers on a drone.</p><p>Hear how much of a difference it makes:</p><p><iframe width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/818890656?h=8fbff7fd19&amp;byline=0"></iframe></p><p>"I think this gives people another dimension to explore in propeller design," Sebastian said.</p><h2>Bringing the closed loop to water</h2><p>Greg Sharrow was trying to make quieter drones to film live classical music when he realized that his loopy design, which aimed to limit tip vortices, had an advantage in the water too.</p><div type="image" title="four shiny steel propellers with loops for blades lined up on a wood table with words painted on it: &quot;sharrow marine the future of propulsion&quot;" height="1499" width="1999" msid="99622442" hostid="261"></div><p>As a boat propeller spins, it creates similar high- and low-pressure regions in water as a drone propeller does in air. These pressure changes create cavities of air that form bubbles.</p><p>This process, called cavitation, is very loud — Kathy Metcalf, the president and CEO of the trade association Chamber of Shipping of America, said it accounts for most of a boat propeller's noise.</p><p>Sharrow said his loop-based boat propellers are about 20 decibels softer than traditional propellers because both tip vortices and cavitation are "eliminated or significantly reduced."</p><p><iframe width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/374937600?h=1d29ece14a"></iframe></p><p>But to determine the noise reduction for ocean life, Halpern said that it's crucial to measure the frequencies, in hertz, of the propeller noise. Marine animals can hear a much wider range of frequencies than humans can.</p><p>Sharrow began selling propellers to recreational boaters in 2020 through a company he founded called Sharrow Marine.</p><p><iframe width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/684836454?h=65543ba186"></iframe></p><p>Sharrow plans to run third-party tests to better assess the extent of his propellers' underwater noise reduction. He said he aims to publish the results in the next year.</p><h2>Loops could be more energy efficient, too</h2><p>Metcalf described cavitation as lost energy.</p><p>Testing led by the company <a href="https://boattest.com/Sharrow-Propeller" target="_blank" rel="noopener">BoatTEST</a> found that the Sharrow Propeller was up to 30% more efficient than a standard blade propeller.</p><p>Efficiency doesn't just save money — it can also help ships use less fuel and emit less heat-trapping gasses into the atmosphere.</p><div type="image" title="black oil covers a bean where a worker in white pants covered in oil walks with a shovel and bucket with a large ship in the distant water" height="1499" width="1999" msid="99622443" hostid="261"></div><p>The <a href="https://www.oecd.org/ocean/topics/ocean-shipping/">Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has said</a> that about 90% of traded goods are transported by ocean shipping, which represents 2.9% of global greenhouse-gas emissions.</p><p>Sharrow hopes to expand into the shipping industry as his company scales up manufacturing.</p><p>"We have been actively designing propellers of 10 meters in diameter for many years and working collaboratively with shipping-container companies around the world to apply the technology for container ships," Sharrow said.</p><p>He said that Sharrow Marine produces up to 1,300 propellers a month at its facilities in Detroit and that the company had months' worth of back orders to catch up on through a supply collaboration with Yamaha. His plan is to scale up to make hundreds of thousands of propellers each year.</p><h2>The future of shipping could be much cleaner and quieter</h2><p>Though loop propellers aren't widely used for commercial shipping vessels — the main culprits of underwater noise from propellers — they could one day replace those ships' noisy screw propellers or traditional blade propellers.</p><div type="image" title="container ship labeled Evergreen across the side stacked high with green red and blue boxes in the open ocean with a coast in the distance" height="1499" width="1999" msid="99622444" hostid="261"></div><p>Quieter propellers are just one part of an impending reckoning for the shipping industry.</p><p>To reduce emissions, cargo ships have to switch to low-emission fuel sources like <a href="https://qz.com/2111985/maersk-cant-find-enough-green-fuel-for-its-carbon-neutral-ships" target="_blank" rel="noopener">green methanol</a>. That would involve redesigning new ships, retrofitting old ones, and building the coastal infrastructure to refuel them.</p><p>Nobody's requiring shipping companies to do that, so they aren't rushing to do it. But Metcalf said there's "a very quiet push" to turn sustainability guidelines from the UN's International Maritime Organization into a mandatory code or market instrument to kick-start the fuel transition.</p><p>Reducing underwater noise could go hand in hand with that transformation.</p><p>"There's a synergy there," Metcalf said. "You can improve your energy efficiency and reduce your underwater noise with the same kind of things."</p><p>Strategies with such synergy include reshaping bows and hulls, maintaining a clean hull and undamaged propellers, and adding extra structures to decrease cavitation around the propeller. Some of those options are operational, and some involve retrofitting the ship. All can help save energy, reduce noise, and make greener shipping.</p><p>"Propellers are a big piece of the solution, but they're not the only piece," Metcalf said.</p><p><em>April 19, 2023: This story has been updated to clarify the findings of the study on stress among North Atlantic right whales.</em></p><p><em>In case you missed it, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/xlSZrPlRGbA?feature=share" target="_blank" rel="noopener">watch a replay</a> of Insider's One Planet virtual event with the activist and artist Elijah McKenzie-Jackson.</em></p>

New propellers with looped blades could help make the oceans quiet again, sparing both marine life and the climate

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Jacob Rock, a nonverbal teenager with autism, spent 7 years learning to communicate with his iPad.</li><li>Six months after typing his first words, he surprised everyone when he said he'd written a symphony.</li></ul><p>Seated in the sixth row of the Alex Theater on the last Saturday night in September, Jacob Rock bobbed rhythmically in his seat, clicking his tongue as a 54-piece orchestra played out sounds he'd first heard in his head.</p><p>Jacob, a nonverbal autistic teenager, wrote the 70-minute concert that made its public debut in Glendale, California: a symphony called "Unforgettable Sunrise," representing his own sunrise out of silence.</p><p>It took seven years of persistent practicing for Jacob — who was diagnosed with severe autism as a toddler and has never said more than a handful of words out loud — to learn to communicate by typing with a single finger on his iPad. The massive leap forward came as the COVID-19 pandemic prompted lockdowns worldwide.</p><p>With everyone trapped inside, Jacob began to break free.</p><h2>'My name is Jacob'</h2><p>Among his first full sentences, read aloud by a digitized voice for the then-16-year-old using a text-to-speech app, was a declaration to his parents: "My name is Jacob. Not Jake." From there, the teen, who had previously communicated via pointing and grunts and was assumed by some of his teachers to have a low IQ with limited comprehension skills, continued to surprise them.</p><p>Just six months after introducing himself to the world, Jacob told his father, Paul Rock, that he had written a 70-minute symphony entirely in his head. Paul, a former record promoter and cofounder of the nonprofit Wild Honey Foundation, which produces concerts, film screenings, online fundraisers, and live stream events to benefit autism treatment, told Insider this moment was when a new two-year journey began to help the teenager express the music that was stuck inside him.</p><p>"We were like, 'Oh, my God, you have a symphony.' And he told us, 'Yeah, I'll describe it for you,' then he typed out a pretty vivid description," Paul told Insider. </p><h2><div type="image" title="A crowd gathers below the center marquee of the Alex Theater, which reads &quot;Wild Honey Presents: Unforgettable Sunrise Symphony, Saturday September 30 - 8pm.&quot;&quot;" height="2844" width="3792" msid="104117714" hostid="261"></div></h2><p>Jacob's original description of his symphony, which was provided to musician Rob Laufer for help composing the piece, began: "It starts with piano bang, (long sample time that reverberates) and moves into: A series of bursts of cacophony on piano (5, 10, 30, 40, and 30 seconds a little over 2 min in total). I want soaring violins to rise out of the cacophony for 2 minutes. Dancing for joy. I want to hear the violins reaching for the sun." </p><p>"I am concerned that being autistic gave me the ability to hear music that mirrored my damn situation, so I felt the need to make the world aware of my plight as someone who always felt isolated in my silence," Jacob wrote in a program note to audience members who attended the concert.</p><p>Laufer, a friend of the Rock family, told Insider that Jacob's emotional intention behind the piece was immediately apparent. Still, it took the pair several months of trial and error before they fell into a rhythm together to bring the music to life.</p><p>"Once he began communicating, I was right away just so impressed with his mind and his experience and what he had to say," Laufer told Insider. "And as soon as I read his outline, his directions for the symphony, I was blown away at the possibilities, musically, because he already outlined instrument combinations that I've never heard of before — harp and bongo, for example."</p><h2><div type="image" title="Three men hug on stage with an orchestra behind them." height="2563" width="3417" msid="104117715" hostid="261"></div></h2><p>Over the next two years, Jacob and Laufer would collaborate nearly every week, comparing Laufer's compositions to the musical directions Jacob, who cannot read sheet music, laid out in detailed, written descriptions. Eventually, Paul told Insider, Jacob felt as though Laufer could read his mind.</p><p>The pair co-created a score to Jacob's exacting specifications, featuring  the "scary laughing" of flutes, strings "demanding sleep," and "manic horn met by soaring violin."</p><h2><strong>The silent boy</strong></h2><p>Paul told Insider he always knew his beloved son would do something creative. Though Jacob had so often been brushed off by people who believed he could, at best, be trained to complete "menial tasks" like laundry, his father said music has always been his obvious passion.</p><p>As a baby, loudly blaring the songs of the Beach Boys or Bob Dylan would soothe his crying. In his childhood years, Paul installed a set of wind chimes in Jacob's room to prevent the boy from leaving the house in the middle of the night to play with the set on their porch. Now a young adult, his collection of instruments includes bongo drums, conga drums, and a piano.</p><p>It's difficult for Jacob to plan and carry out complex or sequential movements. He also struggles with severe gastrointestinal problems — before he could communicate his pain through his iPad, he frequently resorted to self-harming behaviors when experiencing a flare-up.</p><p>"It was damn, damn satisfying that I could claim my terrific identity and show everyone my intelligence," Jacob typed in response to <a href="https://www.kqed.org/news/11962056/non-verbal-teen-symphony-debut-los-angeles" target="_blank" rel="noopener">KQED</a> when asked what it was like to finally be able to communicate in words.</p><p>Since Jacob began communicating through the device, Paul learned his son's internal world is so much more vivid than he could have imagined. Jacob started writing poetry, requesting to watch movies that he'd seen referenced in clues from "Jeopardy!" and taking on college coursework in school after previously being taught at a third-grade level.</p><p>"He told us that he learned or taught himself to read at age five — and all the other stuff he just learned by absorbing everything around him," Paul told Insider. He added that Jacob has a phenomenal memory, recalling even fuzzy details from his birth, when he was born with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. "He's this silent boy, just listening and hearing everything, and with a brilliant mind where everything that goes in never leaves. At one point he told me had five symphonies in his head at once and he was getting full."</p><h2>A complex diagnosis</h2><p>Several experts who specialize in the treatment of patients with autism told Insider that it's not uncommon for nonverbal patients to have their abilities wildly underestimated, describing patients with incredible memory, artistic abilities, and musical talent that can be overlooked as they struggle with other symptoms such as anxiety, aggression, and motor control delays.</p><p>Dr. Sharief Taraman a pediatric neurologist and associate professor in the School of Medicine at the University of California, Irvine, told Insider that, neurologically, the systems that control motor development and language acquisition, as well as regulating the body in response to external stimuli are deeply interconnected. Autism can impact some or all of these systems and more, resulting in a wide spectrum of complicated medical symptoms that he said require patience to treat effectively.</p><p>"People talk about curing autism and stuff — that's not a thing. I think what we're trying to do is trying to take someone that actually has a lot of kind of superpowers and help those individuals learn how to use their superpowers properly," Taraman, who is also the CEO of Cognoa, a pediatric behavioral health company developing digital diagnostic and therapeutic tools for autistic patients, said. "I think the end goal is how do we help individuals enjoy the beautiful parts of autism and take the things that are causing distress for them and get rid of those and help them with those types of things?"</p><h2>Jacob's deeply personal debut</h2><p>"I just couldn't stop watching Jacob's expression. He was beaming ear to ear. He was making his noises because he was happy, but he was beaming ear to ear and he lasted the entire show. I've never seen that," Sheri A. Marino, who sat next to Jacob's family during the symphony's debut, told Insider. "That alone tells me so much about how important and real this is for Jacob. How impactful what he's been holding in his head and his heart is, and how impactful it was on that entire theater."</p><p>Marino, a speech-language pathologist and executive director of the Autism Healthcare Collaborative, has been a member of Jacob's medical team for the last 11 years. She told Insider Jacob's recent breakthroughs have primarily been due to his medical team's progress in stabilizing his gastrointestinal problems, reducing his seizures, and addressing his chronic lack of sleep. Marino said as he became more stable medically, he began to blossom emotionally and make huge advancements in his skill development.</p><p>Marino said the production was evidence of the years of unyielding effort Jacob and his parents have put forth to stabilize him. And the joy they're experiencing now that he is expressing the music locked inside him, she said, is palpable for Jacob's entire treatment team.</p><p>"Unforgettable Sunrise," now 19-year-old Jacob's first symphony, publicly debuted September 30 at the Alex Theater in Glendale, California, performed by musicians from USC's Thornton School of Music conducted by Daniel Newman-Lessler. The 1,400-seat theater was nearly full after a viral video from local news station <a href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cxq7-laLFos/?igshid=MWZjMTM2ODFkZg%3D%3D">KQED</a> made its way around social media.</p><div type="image" title="A crowd in a theater stands and claps for three men on stage" height="719" width="1439" msid="104117716" hostid="261"></div><p>Seated in the audience beside his father, Jacob nodded his head along with the music he composed with the help of Laufer, occasionally making enthusiastic sounds as the horns blared and strings sang in an experimental orchestral piece of his own creation. The symphony received a standing ovation. </p><p>An orchestra in Cincinnati has reached out to Laufer and the Rock family to bring Jacob's symphony to Ohio. Laufer told Insider there are rumblings of interest to create a movie about the process. And Jacob has already begun work on his next project, a Mozart-influenced opera.<br /><br />"I'm very glad you felt my latest work was worth your time and money," Jacob's iPad called out in a monotone voice to the audience just moments before his symphony debuted. "The symphony is my story, so enjoy being in my head for 70 minutes."</p>

An autistic teen was unable to communicate for 16 years. Once given the tools to speak, his parents experienced a revelation: Their son wrote a symphony.

<p><a href="https://www.insider.com/the-well-designed-life-shares-expert-interior-outdoor-design-advice-2021"><div type="image" title="A purple banner that reads in white, green, and yellow text, &quot;The Well-Designed Life&quot;" height="150" width="1200" msid="87469763" hostid="261"></div></a></p><p class="drop-cap">Just like curated <keyword id="11910348" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="decor" source="Orion">decor</keyword> can <a href="https://www.insider.com/how-to-make-my-apartment-look-bigger-better-2021-8">elevate your home</a>, being intentional about the sounds you choose to embrace in your space can help turn it into a sanctuary.</p><p>Insider spoke with experts about how to craft a positive auditory environment by using the connection between <keyword id="12452720" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="sound" source="Orion">sound</keyword>, emotion, and health.</p><p>Keep reading to find out some ways to use sound to <a href="https://www.insider.com/what-should-i-spend-the-most-on-for-home-office">curate</a> a more inviting and productive space.</p><h2><strong>You must </strong><strong>first </strong><strong>eliminate unwanted noise by soundproofing your space</strong></h2><div type="image" title="A shot of a white corner couch and an ottoman on a white fuzzy rug in a room light by a lamp and decorated with pictures of Prince, Michael Jackson, and a sign that says &quot;Black Wing Studios&quot;" height="1667" width="2500" msid="87469764" hostid="261"></div><p class="drop-cap">Acoustic designer Tim Crossley, a cofounder of <a href="https://www.crossleyacoustics.com">Crossley Acoustics</a>, told Insider that uninvited noise - such as the sound of traffic or construction, or chatter from the next room - can affect your mood and decrease concentration.</p><p>"Sound can have a huge impact on your experience in a particular space," Crossley said. "Soundproofing lets you remove noise that you don't want to make room for the sounds that you do."</p><p>Crossley - who has consulted on sound <keyword id="11922149" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="design" source="Orion">design</keyword> and construction for spaces such as Precision Sound Studios and Black Wings Studio - suggested minimizing unwanted noises by adding soft, sound-absorbing items <a href="https://www.insider.com/making-a-maximalist-space-without-mess-interior-designers-2021-5">such as rugs</a>, upholstered furniture, fabric wall hangings, bath mats, and shower curtains. You can also invest in soundproof windows or white-noise machines.</p><h2><strong>Turn your living room into a haven with a mix of ambient and intentional sounds</strong></h2><p class="drop-cap"><a href="https://livingrhea.com/music">Rhea Mehta</a>, a sound practitioner, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/keepinitrhea/">singer</a>, and scientist who trained in sound ceremony and therapy, said sound is "a powerful healing tool" and "an accessible and drug-free way to change your mood and improve your well-being."</p><p>Mehta added that allowing natural sounds to drift into your living room from an open window can have a centering, grounding effect in what may normally be a chaotic space.</p><p>"Nature sounds, even prerecorded ones, have calming properties and make most people feel happier," she explained. "I love the sound of cicadas or birds chirping."</p><blockquote class="pullquote-wrapper"><q class="pullquote-quotation">Singing or humming produces beneficial vibrations in the body that may relieve stress, and most people are comforted by their own voice.</q></blockquote><p>Mehta added that musical and auditory instruments can "help you connect with sound more deeply," so you may also want to experiment with tools such as tuning forks, crystal bowls, or Tibetan singing bowls <a href="https://www.insider.com/interior-designer-shares-things-to-get-rid-of-from-living-room">in your living room</a>.</p><p>She especially recommended gentle, passive tools such as wooden Koshi chimes, which emit peaceful tones when stirred by people or wind. </p><div type="image" title="A modern bedroom decorated with white curtains that are open, revealing a view of a lake" height="2669" width="4001" msid="87469766" hostid="261"></div><h2><strong>Curating bedroom sounds can create a restful place for sleep and relaxation</strong></h2><p class="drop-cap">Especially in the bedroom, crafting a beautiful auditory environment may start with eliminating harsh sounds. </p><p>"The bedroom should be a restful place," Mehta said. "Some ambient sounds, like honking or sirens, can put us in a state of fear and stress."</p><p>Mehta added that playing soft tones or mantras - rhythmic chants used to promote peace, harmonize the mind and body, and connect with the spirit - in the background can <a href="https://www.insider.com/what-an-interior-designer-would-never-have-in-their-bedroom">give your bedroom</a> a sense of peace. </p><p>She also said that "just listening to mantras can provide comfort."</p><h2><strong>Bathrooms are an ideal place to connect with your own voice</strong></h2><p class="drop-cap">Mehta suggested taking advantage of an echoing bathroom by singing and humming to create your own healing soundscape.</p><p>"Embrace the echoes," she said. "Singing or humming produces beneficial vibrations in the body that may relieve stress, and most people are comforted by their own voice."</p><p>Humming and singing also require you to control your breathing, which has recorded <a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/relaxation-techniques-breath-control-helps-quell-errant-stress-response">benefits</a> for anxiety.</p><p>Mehta added that <a href="https://www.insider.com/things-in-your-bathroom-to-get-rid-of-according-to-interior-designers">bathrooms are also a great space</a> for "amplifying the soothing sound of water from a shower or mini waterfall," bringing the sounds of nature inside your <keyword id="11898442" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="home" source="Orion">home</keyword>.</p><h2><strong>Soundscapes for productivity are highly individual</strong></h2><div type="image" title="A room with three comfy chairs facing a TV that's hanging above a counter with a sink. The room is also decorated with plants on one side." height="1600" width="2400" msid="87469768" hostid="261"></div><p class="drop-cap">The ideal soundscape for <a href="https://www.insider.com/how-to-make-working-from-home-space-better">productivity is different for each person</a>. Some people focus best in completely quiet home offices, but others may find that introducing controlled sound can boost performance. </p><p>"For people who prefer not to work in pure silence, listening to music in another language can help you focus without being distracted by lyrics," Mehta said. </p><blockquote class="pullquote-wrapper"><q class="pullquote-quotation">Beats with higher frequencies help stimulate alpha and beta brain waves, which can promote alertness and creativity.</q></blockquote><p>Mehta also said that binaural beats - auditory illusions that stem from hearing varying frequencies in different ears - used with headphones can help create a personal sound oasis.</p><p>"Beats with higher frequencies help stimulate alpha and beta brain waves, which can promote alertness and creativity," she said. </p><h2><strong>Ambient sounds can also be beneficial in children's spaces </strong></h2><p class="drop-cap">Sounds that evoke a sense of wonder can help fill children's spaces with creativity and joy. </p><p>"I love using ethereal and cosmic sounds with kids," Mehta said. "Most kids seem to appreciate the sound of chimes or ambient music with a spacey feel."</p><p>The natural sounds of playtime can also generate a positive vibe throughout a home.</p><p>Mehta said, "There's something so uplifting about the sound of children's laughter, so letting playroom sounds drift into the rest of the home can create a warm atmosphere in the whole house."</p>

Auditory specialists share ways to create peaceful soundscapes in your space

<img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5de94e98fd9db273082e0536-1854/mit-quantum-squeezing-01-press.jpg" alt="LIGO quantum squeezing device" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://news.mit.edu/2019/ligo-reach-quantum-noise-wave-1205">Lisa Barsotti</a></span></p><p class="caption">Researchers install a new quantum squeezing device into one of LIGO's gravitational wave detectors.</p><ul class="summary-list"><li>Large collisions in space, like those between black holes or neutron stars, create ripples in spacetime called <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/gravitational-waves" target="_blank" rel="noopener">gravitational waves</a> that were first predicted by <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/albert-einstein/">Albert Einstein</a>.</li><li><strong>The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ligo-virgo-detecting-gravitational-waves-more-sensitive-black-hole-collisions-2019-3">Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)</a> first <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gravitational-waves-detected-first-time-ligo-2016-2">detected gravitational waves</a> in 2015. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/ligo">LIGO</a> and its partner in Italy, called Virgo, have been detecting <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/waves-from-black-hole-swallowing-neutron-star-2019-8">waves from cosmic collisions</a> ever since.</strong></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/earth-gravitational-wave-detector-ligo-virgo-upgrade-einstein-2019-10">These two machines</a> recently became more powerful and precise with a new instrument that squeezes light. </li><li>LIGO can now make up to 50% more <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/objects-gravitational-waves-can-detect-2017-6">detections</a>, finding new gravitational waves almost every week.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.</a></li></ul><p>One of the most remarkable experiments in history - a trio of giant machines that listen for ripples in spacetime <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/objects-gravitational-waves-can-detect-2016-2/?r=AU&amp;IR=T">called gravitational waves</a> - just got more powerful and precise.</p><p>That's thanks to a new light-squeezing instrument that researchers installed in the experiment's main machine: the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). Its Italian counterpart, Virgo, got a similar tool.</p><p>The instrument, called a quantum vacuum squeezer, is the latest in a series of upgrades to the gravitational-wave detectors, which are opening a new field of astronomy and changing how we understand the universe.</p><p>By squeezing photons on the quantum level, the instrument ensures the particles produce fewer tiny fluctuations, which reduces background noise and allows LIGO to sense gravitational waves from sources about 15% further away. Such waves usually come from distant collisions between massive objects, like black holes and neutron stars, that bend spacetime - a phenomenon first predicted by Albert Einstein. </p><p>The squeezer tool allows LIGO to make up to 50% more detections, finding new gravitational waves almost every week.</p><p>"When the rate of detection goes up, not only do we understand more about the sources we know, because we have more to study, but our potential for discovering unknown things comes in," Nergis Mavalvala, a LIGO astrophysicist, said in a <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2019/ligo-reach-quantum-noise-wave-1205">press release</a>. "We're casting a broader net."</p><h2>The latest major upgrade to one of Earth's most ambitious experiments</h2><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5c9d0b472cc74031466093b7-1248/gravitational-wave-detector-laser-mirror-ligo-virgo-worker-suit.jpg" alt="gravitational wave detector laser mirror ligo virgo worker suit" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://home.infn.it/it/comunicazione/comunicati-stampa/3485-onde-gravitazionali-ligo-e-virgo-tornano-all-ascolto-dell-universo">EGO/Virgo Collaboration/Perciballi</a></span></p><p class="caption">A worker inspects quartz fibers that suspend a mirror inside the Virgo gravitational-wave observatory.</p><p>In 1916, Einstein predicted that accelerating massive objects, like neutron stars or black holes, would create ripples or "waves" in the fabric of space and time. However, he didn't think these gravitational waves would ever be detected - they seemed too weak to pick up amid all the noise and vibrations on Earth. For 100 years, it seemed Einstein was right.</p><p>But in the late 1990s, LIGO's machines in Washington and Louisiana were built as an attempt to pick up the signals Einstein thought we'd never detect. </p><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5de967e3fd9db2088d1b3537-551/gsfc20171208archivee000415orig.jpg" alt="gravitational waves" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://images.nasa.gov/details-GSFC_20171208_Archive_e000415.html">NASA Goddard</a></span></p><p class="caption">When two black holes collide, they release massive amounts of energy in the form of gravitational waves that last a fraction of a second.</p><p>Finally, in September 2015, after 13 years of silence, LIGO detected its <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gravitational-waves-detected-first-time-ligo-2016-2">first gravitational waves</a>: signals from the merger of two black holes some 1.3 billion light-years away. The discovery opened an entirely new field of astronomy and earned a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/2017-nobel-prize-in-physics-gravitational-waves-kip-thorne-rainer-weiss-barry-barish-2017-10">Nobel Prize in Physics</a> for three researchers who helped conceive of LIGO.</p><p>Since then, LIGO and its Italian companion Virgo have detected two other catastrophic collisions. After the black-hole merger, the observatories detected the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/neutron-stars-crash-ligo-gravitational-waves-periodic-elements-2017-10">merging of two neutron stars</a> in October 2017, followed by what scientists believe was <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/waves-from-black-hole-swallowing-neutron-star-2019-8">a black hole swallowing a neutron star</a> in August. Altogether, the observatories have detected likely gravitational waves more than 30 times. </p><p>In October, LIGO and Virgo <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/earth-gravitational-wave-detector-ligo-virgo-upgrade-einstein-2019-10">gained a third partner</a>: the Kamioka Gravitational-wave Detector (KAGRA) in Japan.</p><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d978c0e0977cd139d4d747b-1956/gettyimages-496478166.jpg" alt="kagra japan gravitational waves" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-kagra-telescope-system-to-detect-gravitational-waves-is-news-photo/496478166?adppopup=true">The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images</a></span></p><p class="caption">The KAGRA system is housed in a giant L-shaped tunnel located 200 meters underground in Hida, Gifu, Japan.</p><p>With the help of KAGRA, scientists expect to narrow down the location of massive collisions with three times more accuracy. That would make it much easier for telescopes on Earth to find and confirm the distant collisions responsible for the waves the network picks up.</p><p>Between these three machines, the experiment could ultimately detect 100 collisions per year, <a href="http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/vicky/">Vicky Kalogera</a>, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University and LIGO, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ligo-virgo-detecting-gravitational-waves-more-sensitive-black-hole-collisions-2019-3">previously</a> told Business Insider. </p><p>The new squeezer instrument brings it one step closer to that goal.</p><h2>How LIGO detects gravitational waves</h2><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d6594ea2e22af248410c852-2255/ligo-nsf.jpg" alt="ligo nsf laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory" style="color: #000000;" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/blueshift/index.php/2015/11/16/doing-astronomy-with-our-eyes-closed/">LIGO Laboratory/NSF</a></span></p><p class="caption">The L-shaped LIGO observatory in Hanford, Washington, is one of three gravitational-wave detectors in operation.</p>Each L-shaped gravitational-wave detector consists of two 2.5-mile-long arms. The detector shoots out a laser beam and splits it in two. One of those split beams is sent down one 2.5-mile-long tube, while the other goes down the identical, perpendicular tube.<p>The beams bounce off mirrors then converge back near the beam splitter. When all is still, the light waves return at equal length and line up in such a way that they cancel each other out to the detector.</p><p>But when a gravitational wave hits Earth, it warps spacetime - briefly making one tube longer and the other shorter. This rhythmic stretching-and-squeezing distortion continues until the wave passes. When that happens, the two waves of light don't wind up converging at equal lengths, so they don't neutralize each other. That leads the detector to record some flashes of light.</p><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d978c7e32bf0f12111a0d98-2400/gravitational-wave-detector-laser-mirror-ligo-virgo-workers-suits.jpg" alt="gravitational wave detector laser mirror ligo virgo workers suits" style="color: #000000;" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/optics">Caltech/MIT/LIGO Lab</a></span></p><p class="caption">Technicians inspect the coating of a mirror that reflects LIGO's laser beam.</p><p>Measuring those changes in brightness thus allows physicists to detect and observe gravitational waves that pass through Earth. Once a wave is found, astronomers alert telescopes around the globe, which attempt to zero in on the cosmic event that likely triggered the waves.</p><p>The challenge, however, is that LIGO and Virgo are extraordinarily sensitive - when a wave passes, the arms' length changes by less than 1/10,000th of the width of a proton particle. So the detector systems <a href="https://www.ligo.org/science/Publication-O1Noise/index.php">can be easily disturbed</a>, leading to false signals. Even the microscopic movements of atoms in the mirrors can create a false alarm. </p><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d978487a4107d108e34a401-2000/advanced-ligo-mirror-upgrade-gravitational-waves-mit.jpeg" alt="advanced ligo mirror upgrade gravitational waves mit" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.advancedligo.mit.edu/core.html">LIGO/MIT</a></span></p><p class="caption">A technician inspects a LIGO mirror.</p><p>To mitigate interference, LIGO and Virgo's lasers are shot through a vacuum. But in that vacuum, photons are still constantly created and destroyed. And even that effect can mess with the results.</p><p>As the photons quickly pop in and out of existence, "this quantum noise is like a popcorn crackle in the background that creeps into our interferometer," Mavalvala said.</p><p>Because scientists can't accurately measure those photon pops, they can't distinguish between that noise and any gravitational wave signals that fall within the same frequency range.</p><h2>The new instrument 'squeezes' the vacuum to make photons less noisy</h2><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5de94e81fd9db2730625d1f1-2200/mit-quantum-squeezing-02-press.jpg" alt="LIGO quantum squeezing device" style="color: #222222; font-size: 15px;" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://news.mit.edu/2019/ligo-reach-quantum-noise-wave-1205">Maggie Tse</a></span></p><p class="caption">A close-up of the quantum squeezer that has expanded LIGO's expected detection range by 50%.</p><p>The squeezing tool is meant to address this photon problem.</p><p>As the photons in the vacuum pop in and out of existence, there are two major things scientists can't measure about them: how many photons there are (amplitude), and when they appear (phase). The new instrument helps with the latter.</p><p>At its heart is a laser beam pointed at a tiny crystal surrounded by mirrors. Through the crystal's atoms, the laser interacts with the vacuum in a way that rearranges the photons' amplitude and phase, "squeezing" the vacuum so that fluctuations in the particles' arrival time are smaller. The Virgo device works the same way.</p><p>Mavalvala called the ability to manipulate the vacuum in this way "an end-run around nature." </p><p>But there's a slight catch to the strategy.</p><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5de9788efd9db21c2733edab-620/ligo2965.jpg" alt="LIGO squeezed light device" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/image/ligo20190326a">LIGO/Caltech/ MIT/Matt Heintze</a></span></p><p class="caption">LIGO team members install in-vacuum equipment that is part of the squeezed-light upgrade.</p><p>"When we squeeze the distribution of photon arrival times, something else must be becoming more uncertain," LIGO team member Maggie Tse said in a <a href="https://physics.aps.org/articles/v12/139">release</a>.</p><p>In this case, that "something else" is the number of photons in the vacuum (the amplitude), which fluctuates more as a result of the new instrument.</p><p>But for now, the trade-off is worth it because uncertainty about photons' arrival times causes scientists to miss more gravitational-wave signals than uncertainty about their amplitude does.</p><p>Researchers are also working on a similar filter device to address the amplitude problem.</p><p><em>Dave Mosher contributed reporting to this post.</em></p>            <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/2017-nobel-prize-in-physics-gravitational-waves-kip-thorne-rainer-weiss-barry-barish-2017-10">Scientists won the Nobel Prize for detecting gravitational waves - here's why that matters</a></h3>                    <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/zsiNAF8F-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;"></iframe>            

An experiment that solved a 100-year-old mystery posed by Einstein just got up to 50% more powerful by squeezing light

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d978c7e32bf0f12111a0d98-2400/gravitational-wave-detector-laser-mirror-ligo-virgo-workers-suits.jpg" border="0" alt="gravitational wave detector laser mirror ligo virgo workers suits" data-mce-source="Caltech/MIT/LIGO Lab" data-mce-caption="Technicians inspect the coating of a mirror inside the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO: a gravitational-wave observatory." data-link="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/optics"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/optics">Caltech/MIT/LIGO Lab</a></span></p><p class="caption">Technicians inspect the coating of a mirror inside the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li><strong data-stringify-type="bold">A <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/gravitational-waves">gravitational-wave</a> observatory in Japan is joining Earth's most powerful tool to detect <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-are-gravitational-waves-and-why-are-they-important-2016-2">ripples in spacetime</a>.</strong></li><li><strong data-stringify-type="bold">The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ligo-virgo-detecting-gravitational-waves-more-sensitive-black-hole-collisions-2019-3">Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)</a> first <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gravitational-waves-detected-first-time-ligo-2016-2">detected gravitational waves</a> from the merging of two <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/black-holes">black holes</a> in 2015, solving a 100-year-old mystery posed by Albert Einstein.</strong></li><li><strong data-stringify-type="bold"><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/ligo">LIGO</a> and its partner in Italy, called Virgo, have been detecting <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/waves-from-black-hole-swallowing-neutron-star-2019-8">waves from cosmic collisions</a> ever since.</strong></li><li><strong data-stringify-type="bold">A Japanese observatory, the Kamioka Gravitational-wave Detector (KAGRA), will expand the global gravitational-wave network, enabling it to make more <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/objects-gravitational-waves-can-detect-2017-6">detections</a> with greater accuracy.</strong></li><li>KAGRA was built underground and will use cryogenically cooled mirrors to help protect sensitive instruments from picking up false signals.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more.</a></li></ul><p>Earth's most powerful tool for detecting ripples in spacetime is getting a major upgrade.</p><p>An observatory in Japan is joining three giant detectors in Washington, Louisiana, and Italy to form a global network of high-powered observatories that study ripples in spacetime. The network will enhance a field of <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> born just four years ago, when the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (<a href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/">LIGO</a>) solved a 100-year-old mystery posed by Albert Einstein.&#xa0;</p><p>In 1916, Einstein predicted that accelerating massive objects, like neutron stars or black holes, would create ripples or "waves" in the fabric of space and time. However, he didn't think these gravitational waves would ever be detected - they seemed too weak to pick up amid all the noise and vibrations on Earth. For 100 years, it seemed Einstein was right.</p><p>In the late 1990s, LIGO's machines in Washington and Louisiana were built as an attempt to pick up the signals Einstein thought we'd never detect.&#xa0;</p><p>Finally, after 13 years of silence, LIGO detected its <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gravitational-waves-detected-first-time-ligo-2016-2">first gravitational waves</a> in September 2015: signals from the merger of two black holes some 1.3 billion light-years away. The discovery opened an entirely new field of gravitational-wave astronomy and earned a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/2017-nobel-prize-in-physics-gravitational-waves-kip-thorne-rainer-weiss-barry-barish-2017-10">Nobel Prize in Physics</a> for three researchers who helped conceive of LIGO.</p><p>Since then, LIGO and its Italian companion Virgo have detected two other catastrophic collisions. After the black-hole merger, the observatories detected the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/neutron-stars-crash-ligo-gravitational-waves-periodic-elements-2017-10">merging of two neutron stars</a> in October 2017, followed by what they believe was <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/waves-from-black-hole-swallowing-neutron-star-2019-8">a black hole swallowing a neutron star</a> in August. Altogether, the observatories have detected likely gravitational waves more than 30 times.&#xa0;</p><p><em><strong>Read more</strong>: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ligo-virgo-detecting-gravitational-waves-more-sensitive-black-hole-collisions-2019-3">An experiment that solved a 100-year-old mystery posed by Einstein is about to turn back on - and it's more powerful than ever</a></em></p><p>Now LIGO and Virgo are getting another partner: the Kamioka Gravitational-wave Detector (KAGRA) in Japan.</p><p>With the help of KAGRA, scientists expect to narrow down the location of massive collisions with three times more accuracy. That would make it much easier for telescopes on Earth to confirm the collision responsible for the waves the network picks up. Representatives from each observatory signed an agreement on Friday.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d978c0e0977cd139d4d747b-1956/gettyimages-496478166.jpg" border="0" alt="kagra japan gravitational waves" data-mce-source="The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images" data-mce-caption="The KAGRA system is housed in a giant L-shaped tunnel located 200 meters underground, November 6, 2015 in Hida, Gifu, Japan." data-link="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-kagra-telescope-system-to-detect-gravitational-waves-is-news-photo/496478166?adppopup=true"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-kagra-telescope-system-to-detect-gravitational-waves-is-news-photo/496478166?adppopup=true">The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images</a></span></p><p class="caption">The KAGRA system is housed in a giant L-shaped tunnel located 200 meters underground, November 6, 2015 in Hida, Gifu, Japan.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p>"The more detectors we have in the global gravitational-wave network, the more accurately we can localize the gravitational-wave signals on the sky, and the better we can determine the underlying nature of cataclysmic events that produced the signals," David Reitze, executive director of the LIGO Laboratory, said in a <a href="https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/kagra-join-ligo-and-virgo-hunt-gravitational-waves">press release</a>.</p><p>The new global network could ultimately detect 100 collisions per year, <a href="http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/vicky/">Vicky Kalogera</a>, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University and LIGO, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ligo-virgo-detecting-gravitational-waves-more-sensitive-black-hole-collisions-2019-3">previously</a> told Business Insider.&#xa0;</p><h2>How observatories detect gravitational waves</h2><p>KAGRA will operate similarly to LIGO. The <a href="https://ligo.caltech.edu/system/video_items/files/21/Einsteins_messengers_hi_res_Nov_17_WebM_720p.webm?1447873695">animation</a> below, created by LIGO researchers, explains how that works.</p><p>Each L-shaped gravitational-wave detector consists of two 2.5-mile-long arms. The detector shoots out a laser beam and splits it in two. One of those split beams is sent down a 2.5-mile long tube while the other goes down an identical, perpendicular tube.</p><p>&#xa0;</p><p>The beams bounce off mirrors and converge back near the beam splitter. The light waves return at equal length and line up in such a way that they cancel each other out to the detector.&#xa0;</p><p>But when a gravitational wave comes through, it warps spacetime - briefly making one tube longer and the other shorter. This rhythmic stretching-and-squeezing distortion continues until the wave passes. When that happens, the two waves of light don't wind up converging at equal lengths, so they don't neutralize each other. That leads the detector to record some flashes of light.</p><p>&#xa0;</p><p>Measuring those changes in brightness thus allows physicists to measure and observe gravitational waves that pass through Earth.</p><p>Then once a signal is detected, astronomers alert telescopes around the globe to zero in on the cosmic event that likely triggered the waves.</p><p>"This has opened a new window to what we can detect in the universe," Imre Bartos, a physicist at Columbia University and LIGO, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ligo-virgo-detecting-gravitational-waves-more-sensitive-black-hole-collisions-2019-3">previously</a> told Business Insider. "We can detect this - we can now see gravitational waves. But the real exciting things are what we discover with these gravitational waves."</p><h2>KAGRA brings new approaches to noise problems</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d976ec40977cd106f16fd04-868/kagra%20japan.jpg" border="0" alt="kagra japan gravitational waves detector" data-mce-source="ICRR, Univ. of Tokyo/LIGO Lab/Caltech/MIT/Virgo Collaboration" data-mce-caption="An illustration of the underground KAGRA gravitational-wave detector in Japan." data-link="https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/kagra-join-ligo-and-virgo-hunt-gravitational-waves"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/kagra-join-ligo-and-virgo-hunt-gravitational-waves">ICRR, Univ. of Tokyo/LIGO Lab/Caltech/MIT/Virgo Collaboration</a></span></p><p class="caption">An illustration of the underground KAGRA gravitational-wave detector in Japan.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p>KAGRA is expected to come online in December. It will start out slow, operating at levels not sensitive enough to detect gravitational waves. After scientists fine-tune its instruments, they expect it to fully join the hunt sometime in 2020.&#xa0;</p><p>By making the global gravitational-wave detection network more robust, KAGRA will improve its accuracy.</p><p>In the 2017 merger of two neutron stars, scientists traced the event's location to a patch of sky 30 square degrees in size - that's less than 0.1 percent of the sky. But with KAGRA's help, researchers expect to narrow that kind of estimate down even more, to just 10 square degrees. That will give telescopes a much more specific location in which to search for the wave-triggering event.</p><p>The observatory will also use new approaches to make it less prone to false detections.</p><p>Because LIGO and Virgo are extraordinarily sensitive - when a wave passes by, the arms' length changes by less than 1/10,000th of the width of a proton particle - they <a href="https://www.ligo.org/science/Publication-O1Noise/index.php">can easily be disturbed</a> by the vibration of trucks driving on nearby roads or a slight breeze. Even the microscopic movements of atoms in the detector's mirrors can mimic the signal of a gravitational wave.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d978487a4107d108e34a401-2000/advanced-ligo-mirror-upgrade-gravitational-waves-mit.jpeg" border="0" alt="advanced ligo mirror upgrade gravitational waves mit" data-mce-source="LIGO/MIT" data-link="https://www.advancedligo.mit.edu/core.html"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.advancedligo.mit.edu/core.html">LIGO/MIT</a></span></p><p class="caption">A LIGO mirror in Livingston, Louisiana.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p>That's why LIGO has two locations and works with Virgo: If they all detect a signal at exactly the same time, that's likely a gravitational wave passing through Earth.</p><p>KAGRA will lend yet another instrument to help verify those detections, and it will operate underground to be better insulated from the interference of wind, Earth's rumbles, and passing trucks.</p><p>It will also be the first detector to cryogenically chill its mirrors - the practice of using liquefied gas to achieve <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/cryogenics">temperatures below minus 150 degrees Celsius ( minus 238 degrees Fahrenheit)</a> - to reduce noise from the mirrors' own atoms. (Atoms are always vibrating - the energy of that vibration is what we call heat. So cryogenics will cool the material enough that the molecules almost stop vibrating.)</p><p>"These features could supply a very important direction for the future of gravitational-wave detectors with much higher sensitivities," Takaaki Kajita, a principal investigator with the KAGRA project who shared the 2015 Nobel Prize, said in the release.</p><p>Yet another observatory, LIGO India, is expected to join the global gravitational-wave network in 2025.</p><div><div style="position:relative; padding-bottom:calc(52.77% + 44px)"><iframe src="https://gfycat.com/ifr/HugeCompleteHoopoe" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="100%" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div></div><div><div style="position:relative; padding-bottom:calc(58.87% + 44px)"><iframe src="https://gfycat.com/ifr/ActualFailingAnnelid" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="100%" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/2017-nobel-prize-in-physics-gravitational-waves-kip-thorne-rainer-weiss-barry-barish-2017-10">Scientists won the Nobel Prize for detecting gravitational waves - here's why that matters</a></h3>        <div>            <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/zsiNAF8F-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script>        </div>    </div>

A powerful experiment that cracked a 100-year-old mystery posed by Einstein just got a huge upgrade

<ul class="summary-list"><li><strong><a href="https://www.insider.com/category/billie-eilish">Billie Eilish</a>'s March 2019 debut album has cemented her place at the top of the <keyword id="32141" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="pop">pop</keyword> charts.</strong></li><li><strong>At the 2020 Grammy Awards, Eilish broke records, becoming the <a href="https://www.insider.com/billie-eilish-second-person-win-four-major-grammys-one-year-2020-1">second person in history to win all four major Grammys in one year.</a></strong></li><li><strong>While the singer-songwriter has amassed a huge following, one of the most enthusiastic sections of her fan base is <keyword id="10879" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="YouTube">YouTube</keyword>'s <keyword id="2072363" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="ASMR">ASMR</keyword> community.</strong></li><li><strong> Her brand of bedroom pop blends in key aspects of ASMR to create a hyper-intimate <keyword id="6354530" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="music">music</keyword> listening experience. To take a closer look at Billie's ASMR appeal, we spoke to YouTube creator <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE6acMV3m35znLcf0JGNn7Q">Gibi ASMR</a>.</strong></li></ul><p><em>Following is a transcript of the <keyword id="21654" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="video">video</keyword>.</em></p><p><strong>Narrator:</strong> <keyword id="4507185" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Billie-Eilish">Billie Eilish</keyword>. Teenage pop sensation, first musician born in this century to get a No. 1 single, the female artist to log the second most Hot 100 songs at one time, and ASMR icon?</p><p>Yep, one look at YouTube will tell you just how popular Billie is in the ASMR community. The platform is full of ASMR-inspired covers, or whisper tributes, of her music. There's a reason Billie's a favorite of the ASMR crowd. Her music uses key principles of ASMR to redefine the sound of pop, and that's the secret to why she's the industry's fastest-rising superstar.</p><p>ASMR is short for autonomous sensory meridian response, the brain tingles people feel around the head and spine in response to certain triggers. Some of the most common triggers are whispering.</p><p><strong>Producer:</strong> Deep stretch. Let's breathe in and out.</p><p><strong>Narrator:</strong> Rhythmic sounds and movements, and crisp, amplified acoustics.</p><p><strong>Producer:</strong> Plastic bottle. [tapping] Of hand sanitizer.</p><p><strong>Narrator:</strong> You can also find these elements in Billie's music. ♪ Walk in wearing fetters ♪ ♪ Peter should know better ♪ ♪ So you're a tough guy ♪ ♪ Like it really rough guy ♪ ♪ Just can't get enough guy ♪ ♪ Don't ask questions ♪ ♪ You don't wanna know ♪</p><p><strong>Gibi:</strong> In "Bury a Friend," she definitely, like, the voice quality is what sticks out to me. You know, she's saying, like, "I wanna end me." ♪ I wanna ♪ ♪ I wanna end me ♪ It's, like, almost like a whisper, and it gives you the chills.</p><p><strong>Narrator:</strong> This is Gibi, who The New York Times described as "the LeBron James of touching stuff." She's an ASMR creator with over 2 million subscribers on her YouTube channel, and like many ASMRtists, she's also a big Billie fan. In March, when the singer dropped her debut LP, "When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?" her label reached out to Gibi and commissioned her to do an ASMR read-through of Billie's album.</p><p><strong>Gibi:</strong> [whispering] What do you know? Why aren't you scared of me? Why do you care for me? It sounds like she is right up on the mic and just, like, barely letting the sound out, and she sounds gorgeous. ♪ Into your ocean eyes ♪</p><p><strong>Narrator:</strong> That hushed, tingly, whisper quality of Billie's voice? ♪ Don't you know too much already? ♪ Narrator: It's supposed to sound like that. According to Billie's sound mixer, when it comes to her vocals, "everything is close-mic'd and whispered." The goal, he says, is to always have Billie's vocals sound "super-present." It's as if she's right there, murmuring directly into your ear. Another thing Billie seems to share with ASMRtists is a passion for foley sound. To produce a range of different sounds for their followers, ASMR creators borrow a lot of techniques from foley artists, the people that recreate everyday sound effects for movies and TV. [crunching] Similarly, Billie and her brother-slash-producer, Finneas, DIY a lot of the sound effects they use in her songs. The metallic scraping sound that marks the upbeat of "You Should See Me in a Crown"? [metallic scrape] That's a recording of Finneas sharpening a knife. [metallic scrape] ♪ Visions I vandalize ♪ And the horror-movie sound of a whizzing drill in "Bury a Friend?" ♪ Calling security, keeping my head held ♪ Billie captured that on her phone at a dentist appointment. [whooshing] To some people, the sounds of a dentist office might seem more nightmarish than relaxing, but dentist role-plays are actually very common in ASMR.</p><p><strong>Gibi:</strong> [whispering] The mirror tool. [light whirring]</p><p><strong>Narrator:</strong> And so are many types of drilling sounds, from dental drills [light, high-pitched drilling] to power drills. [loud drilling] Then there's the intro to Billie's album, which opens with a surprisingly loud and slightly gross recording of Billie sucking the saliva out of her Invisalign. [plastic tapping and slurping] Those kinds of wet, slurpy mouth sounds will be familiar to any fans of the video genre mukbang, which means "broadcast eating" in Korean. [slurping] There's a major ASMR component to mukbang videos, as they often involve a lot of very loud slurping, which some ASMR fans find hypnotic. [slurping and smacking] Whether mouth noises are your thing or you like to stick with paper crinkling and finger tapping, chances are you're listening to ASMR through headphones if you want to get the optimal effect. And the same goes for Billie's music. The singer's been called "the first pop star made for AirPods."</p><p><strong>Gibi:</strong> When you do listen to Billie Eilish with headphones, you can hear all of the instruments and the beats, and everything sounds like its own individual thing, and I could totally see where that is similar to the sounds or, like, the layered sort of technique that a lot of ASMRtists use when they find a pleasant sound. So, like, you know, if it's something like her snapping: ♪ I like it when you take control ♪ Or just, like, a really simple beat. [crisp beat]</p><p><strong> Narrator:</strong> Crisp sounds, which are among the most common ASMR triggers, are also a key part of Billie's production. ♪ Out ♪ The clean base and minimal percussion that form the skeleton of her beats leave plenty of space for her unusual sounds and samples. ♪ Sleeping ♪ ♪ You're on your tippy toes, creeping ♪ Take the song "Bad Guy," for example. Where you'd usually have a snare drum keeping the song's pulse, there are just soft yet super-amplified finger snaps. ♪ Bruises on both my knees for you ♪ ♪ Don't say thank you or please I do ♪ There are also strategic gaps of silence to emphasize the weirdest moments in the song, like at the end of the chorus, when Billie's voice suddenly breaks up into a million little pieces, making it sound like she's croaking into a fan. ♪ I'm the bad guy ♪</p><p><strong> Gibi:</strong> You can catch all of the tiny sounds and noises, so it feels extremely immersive. Compared to other music that maybe is, like, a little more flat, I feel like Billie's music is extremely 3D.</p><p><strong>Narrator:</strong> A big reason Billie's music sounds so three-dimensional is that her mixes are specially crafted to dance from one of your ears to the other. When her voice splits up into two or three tracks, it sounds like you have a different Billie in each ear. ♪ Pearly gates look more like a picket fence ♪ ♪ Once you get inside them ♪ ♪ Got friends but can't invite them ♪ ♪ Hills burn in California ♪ ♪ My turn to ignore ya ♪</p><p><strong>Narrator:</strong> In the final riff of "Bad Guy," you'll notice her bouncing from left to right in your headphones. ♪ I'm only good at being bad ♪</p><p><strong>Narrator:</strong> This is what's known in ASMR as the stereo effect, or binaural effect, binaural meaning two ears. ASMRtists use special techniques to produce this effect for their listeners. [light scratching]</p><p><strong>Gibi:</strong> You are using a microphone that can track your movements, or, in my case, I would use two microphones. I kinda want to talk a little bit more about the mall situation. Where I grew up, the mall and the movie theater were right next to each other. If I get closer to the right one, you hear it more in your right ear. Closer to the left, you hear it in your left ear, and it really helps with immersion and making everything sound more intimate, like you're right there and the music or the sounds of ASMR is happening around you.</p><p><strong>Narrator:</strong> So Billie takes a page out of the ASMR playbook by trying to simulate the acoustics of a 3D environment in her music, and this makes listening to her a full-sensory experience, which, at times, can get pretty intense.</p><p><strong>Gibi:</strong> In "Xanny," she has the ear-to-ear movements. If you're wearing headphones, it sounds like she's going back and forth. ♪ I don't need a Xanny ♪ Which is really interesting because it's sort of paired with the distortion in the same song, which is, like, actually loudly uncomfortable to listen to.</p><p><strong>Narrator:</strong> It's probably because her voice often sounds like it's encircling you. Many people find watching ASMR videos unsettling at first for the very same reason. It sometimes feels like the person in the video is physically in the room with you, but that intense intimacy might be the secret behind the power of both ASMR and Billie's music. ASMR is thought to be related to a phenomenon called "frisson," named after the French word for "shiver." Often, frisson is most closely associated with music. Music-induced frisson refers to the pleasurable chills that some people may experience while listening to a song, like the goosebumps or shivers that Billie fans often describe getting from her music. The most well-developed theory about music-induced frisson comes from a music cognitive psychologist named David Huron. This theory states that frisson is actually related to fear. According to this theory, when a song contains a surprising element of some kind, like a sharp and unusual sound effect... [metallic scraping] ♪ Step on the glass ♪ ♪ Staple your tongue ♪ ♪ Bury a friend ♪ Or a voice that suddenly sounds like it's jumping around in space... ♪ Don't give me a Xanny now ♪ That provokes an instinctual fear response in your brain. This defensive reflex is so short-lived, it probably won't reach consciousness, because, in short, the rational part of your brain recognizes there's no threat and quickly inhibits your fear center. That's when you'd feel the tingles. It's the suppression of your fear that's so pleasurable.</p><p>OK, so what does this have to do with ASMR and with Billie's music? Well, because ASMR closely resembles frisson, some scientists believe it might be set off the same way, but with a different initial fear cue. One possibility is that what brings the tingles when you're watching an ASMR video is the perception of physical closeness with the person creating the sounds. Because of the acoustic techniques that many ASMR creators use and the feeling of intimacy that they cultivate, it can feel, at times, like they're entering your personal space, something that makes humans and most animals go into high alert. Billie's vocals and soundscapes create the same unnerving sense of closeness. ♪ Drinking you down like I wanna drown ♪ ♪ Like I wanna end me ♪ ♪ Step on the glass ♪ ♪ Staple your tongue ♪</p><p>Essentially, her music is designed to make your brain and body react. It combines the musical cues that are linked to frisson with the physical cues that may well be linked to ASMR. There are a lot of unexpected musical events in Billie's songs. The startling sound effects [ringing] and new vocal harmonies that seem to come out of nowhere, then there's all the sonic trickery that makes her voice sound like it's moving around spatially, sometimes even approaching or surrounding you. It creates that illusion of proximity. The almost-too-close-for-comfort feeling that you'd get from an ASMR video. Billie Eilish combines all of these techniques to make some of the most spine-tingling music to ever hit mainstream, and if her smash debut is any indication, this tingly sound just might be the future of pop. ♪ My Lucifer is lonely ♪</p><p><em>EDITOR'S NOTE: This video was originally published in October 2019.</em></p>

How Grammy award winner, Billie Eilish, harnesses the power of ASMR in her music

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Two <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/closest-black-hole-to-earth-discovered-millions-more-hidden-2020-5">black holes</a> crashed together and merged in a violent collision that <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gravitational-waves-new-class-of-collision-neutron-stars-2020-1">bent space and time</a>, sending <keyword id="1860685" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="gravitational-waves">gravitational waves</keyword> towards Earth.</li><li>The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ligo-gravitational-wave-detector-more-powerful-squeezing-light-2019-12">Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory</a> detected those ripples in spacetime, and a California telescope picked up a flash of light from the same spot.</li><li>The flare marked the first time astronomers have seen light from a collision of <keyword id="4740034" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="black-holes">black holes</keyword>, which have such a strong gravitational pull that no light can escape.</li><li>Future gravitational-wave observatories will help scientists spot and study more violent space collisions.</li></ul><p>For the first time, astronomers have seen a flash of light from the collision of two black holes.</p><p>The objects met and merged 7.5 billion light-years away, within a vortex of hot, swirling matter circling a larger, supermassive black hole. This whirlpool is called the accretion disk, and it orbits a black hole's event horizon — the point after which gravity is so powerful that not even light can escape.</p><p><div type="image" title="black hole" height="720" width="960" msid="76628108" hostid="261"></div></p><p>That's why scientists have never seen two black holes collide. In the absence of light, they can only identify such mergers by detecting their gravitational waves — ripples in spacetime created by the collisions of massive objects.</p><p><keyword id="6417558" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="albert-einstein">Albert Einstein</keyword> first predicted the phenomenon, but he didn't think gravitational waves would ever be detected. They seemed too weak to pick up on Earth amid all the noise and vibrations.</p><p>For 100 years, it appeared Einstein was right. But in 2015, a pair of machines in Washington and Louisiana detected their <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gravitational-waves-detected-first-time-ligo-2016-2">first gravitational waves</a>: signals from the merging of two black holes some 1.3 billion light-years away. The discovery opened a new field of astronomy and earned a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/2017-nobel-prize-in-physics-gravitational-waves-kip-thorne-rainer-weiss-barry-barish-2017-10">Nobel prize in physics</a> for researchers who helped conceive of the project, called the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (<keyword id="6562538" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="ligo">LIGO</keyword>).</p><p>Now, for the first time, scientists have matched a black-hole collision that LIGO detected to an eruption of light — something that previously seemed impossible, since black holes don't emit any light.</p><p><div type="image" title="merging black holes LIGO GIF" height="471" width="867" msid="76628110" hostid="261"></div></p><p>The researchers think that once the two black holes merged together, the force of the collision sent the newly formed black hole careening through the gas of the accretion disk around the larger black hole.</p><p>"It is the reaction of the gas to this speeding bullet that creates a bright flare, visible with <keyword id="62018" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Telescopes">telescopes</keyword>," Barry McKernan, an astronomer on the California Institute of Technology team that captured the light, said in a press release.</p><p><div type="image" title="gravitational wave detector laser mirror ligo virgo worker suit" height="936" width="1248" msid="76628114" hostid="261"></div></p><p>The researchers <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prl">published</a> their findings in the journal Physical Review Letters on Thursday. They expect to see another flare from the same black hole in a few years, when it's expected to reenter the accretion disk of the supermassive black hole.</p><p>"The reason looking for flares like this is so important is that it helps enormously with astrophysics and cosmology questions. If we can do this again and detect light from the mergers of other black holes, then we can nail down the homes of these black holes and learn more about their origins," study co-author Mansi Kasliwal, an assistant professor of astronomy at Caltech, said in the release.</p><h2>A 'spectacular' flare coincided with the gravitational waves</h2><p><div type="image" title="neutron star collision" height="998" width="1330" msid="76628119" hostid="261"></div></p><p>Both LIGO, which consists of two gravitational-wave detectors in the US, as well as its Italian counterpart, <keyword id="645223" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="Virgo">Virgo</keyword>, sensed the disturbances in space and time in May 2019. Just a few days after, telescopes at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego observed a bright flash of light coming from the same spot in the cosmos. </p><p>As the Caltech researchers later looked back through archival footage of that region of the sky, they spotted the flare-up. The light had slowly faded over a month. The timeline and location lined up with LIGO's observations.</p><p>"This supermassive black hole was burbling along for years before this more abrupt flare," Matthew Graham, a professor of astronomy at Caltech and the study's lead author, said in the release. "In our study, we conclude that the flare is likely the result of a black hole merger, but we cannot completely rule out other possibilities."</p><p>The researchers did, however, rule out the possibility that this light came from routine explosions in the supermassive black hole's accretion disk. That's because the disk was relatively calm for the 15 years before this recent flare-up.</p><p>"Supermassive black holes like this one have flares all the time. They are not quiet objects, but the timing, size, and location of this flare was spectacular," Kasliwal said.</p><h2>How LIGO detects colliding black holes</h2><p><div type="image" title="ligo nsf laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory" height="1691" width="2255" msid="76628131" hostid="261"></div></p><p>Both LIGO experiments and Virgo consist of two 2.5-mile-long arms.</p><p>The detector shoots out a laser beam and splits it in two. One of those split beams is sent down one 2.5-mile-long tube, while the other goes down the identical, perpendicular tube.</p><iframe src="https://gfycat.com/ifr/HugeCompleteHoopoe" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="100%" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;"></iframe><p>The beams bounce off mirrors and then converge back near the beam splitter. When all is still, the light waves return at equal length and line up in such a way that they cancel each other out to the detector.</p><p>But when a gravitational wave hits Earth, it warps spacetime — briefly making one tube longer and the other shorter. This rhythmic stretching-and-squeezing distortion continues until the wave passes. When that happens, the two waves of light don't wind up converging at equal lengths, so they don't neutralize each other. That leads the detector to record some flashes of light.</p><iframe src="https://gfycat.com/ifr/ActualFailingAnnelid" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="100%" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;"></iframe><p>Measuring those changes in brightness thus allows physicists to detect and observe gravitational waves that pass through Earth.</p><p>That's how the observatories detected the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/neutron-stars-crash-ligo-gravitational-waves-periodic-elements-2017-10">merging of two neutron stars</a> in October 2017, as well as what they believe was <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/waves-from-black-hole-swallowing-neutron-star-2019-8">a black hole swallowing a neutron star</a> in August 2019. Altogether, the observatories have detected likely gravitational waves more than 30 times.</p><h2>A new gravitational-wave observatory will help more telescopes spot violent space collisions</h2><p><div type="image" title="kagra japan gravitational waves" height="1467" width="1956" msid="76628139" hostid="261"></div></p><p>Scientists expect more discoveries like this one in the coming years, after a new gravitational-wave observatory called the Kamioka Gravitational-wave Detector (KAGRA) comes online.</p><p>With the help of KAGRA, LIGO and Virgo scientists expect to narrow down the location of massive collisions with three times more accuracy. That would make it much easier for telescopes to confirm the collisions responsible for gravitational waves — and to spot the light they emit.</p><p>The new global network could ultimately detect 100 collisions per year, <a href="http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/vicky/">Vicky Kalogera</a>, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University and LIGO, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ligo-virgo-detecting-gravitational-waves-more-sensitive-black-hole-collisions-2019-3">previously</a> told Business Insider. </p><p>As the growing global gravitational-wave network detects more and more collisions with increasing precision, scientists will be able to learn more about the nature of these massive mergers.</p>

Black holes can produce light when they collide, new research shows — astronomers just saw the first-ever 'flare' from a spacetime-bending merger

<p><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d83f6d72e22af3d113cfc62-1093/apple-airpods-worlds-most-popular-wireless-headphoneswoman-wearing-airpods03202019.jpg" border="0" alt="Apple AirPods worlds most popular wireless headphones_woman wearing airpods_03202019" data-mce-source="Apple" /><p class="source"><span>Apple</span></p><p class="caption">You can use Brain.fm to help you focus throughout your day.</p></div><p></p></div></div></strong></p><ul class="summary-list"><li><strong>Brain.fm is a mindfulness app you can download on your iPhone or Android phone.</strong></li><li><strong>The app uses specially designed music to improve your brain activity, and help you focus and relax.</strong></li><li><strong>You can turn on Brain.fm for timed sessions, or keep it on all day. Either way, it's meant to help you focus at work and increase your productivity.</strong></li><li><strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</strong></li></ul><p>It can be hard to stay on task at work, especially if you don't have an office door you can close. Nearby conversations and errant sounds can make it hard to concentrate. Even if you work somewhere quiet, the chatter inside your head or a barrage of incoming messages can get in the way of starting or finishing your next project.</p><p><a href="https://brain.fm/">Brain.fm</a> has a remedy for these distractions. The app teams composers with scientists to create music designed to help you focus and get work done. It does more than block out noise; Brain.fm's engineered music helps you stay on task throughout your workday.</p><p>Brain.fm, which is available on both <a href="http://bestbuy.7tiv.net/c/196318/614286/10014?subId1=bi_092019_use-brainfm-focus-app&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bestbuy.com%2Fsite%2Fapple-iphone-xs-64gb-gold-verizon%2F6009862.p%3FskuId%3D6009862">iPhone</a> and <a href="http://bestbuy.7tiv.net/c/196318/614286/10014?subId1=bi_092019_use-brainfm-focus-app&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bestbuy.com%2Fsite%2Fgoogle-pixel-3-with-64gb-memory-cell-phone-unlocked-clearly-white%2F6319225.p%3FskuId%3D6319225">Android</a>, offers five focus sessions for free. After that, you'll need to pay either <a href="https://brain.fm/pricing">$6.95 a month or $47.40 a year</a> to keep going. Subscribing gets you unlimited focus sessions and offline access.</p><h3><strong>Check out the products mentioned in this article:</strong></h3><h4><a href="http://bestbuy.7tiv.net/c/196318/614286/10014?subId1=bi_092019_use-brainfm-focus-app&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bestbuy.com%2Fsite%2Fapple-iphone-xs-64gb-gold-verizon%2F6009862.p%3FskuId%3D6009862">iPhone Xs (From $999.99 at Best Buy)</a></h4><h4><a href="http://bestbuy.7tiv.net/c/196318/614286/10014?subId1=bi_092019_use-brainfm-focus-app&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bestbuy.com%2Fsite%2Fgoogle-pixel-3-with-64gb-memory-cell-phone-unlocked-clearly-white%2F6319225.p%3FskuId%3D6319225">Google Pixel 3 (From $799.99 at Best Buy)</a></h4><h2><strong>How Brain.fm works</strong></h2><p>Brain.fm uses an algorithm that takes musical compositions and rearranges them to interact with your brain to keep it in focus. The creators of Brain.fm collaborated with neuroscientists, and ran experiments to test and prove their technology. They even received a grant from the National Science Foundation for their work.</p><p>The app uses music featuring rhythmic modulation to keep you from being either distracted or soothed by the music. It creates a state of neural phase locking, which helps your neurons work together to stay in focus. </p><p>Brain.fm's website has more <a href="https://www.brain.fm/science">information</a> about the science behind the app, including white papers for those of you who want to geek out. But you don't have to understand how it works to enjoy the clarity and focus you can get by using Brain.fm.</p><h2><strong>How to set up Brain.fm</strong></h2><p>Brain.fm offers five free sessions to give you a chance to try it out for yourself. It's easy to get started.</p><p><strong>1. </strong>Download Brain.fm from the Apple App Store or Google Play. </p><p><strong>2. </strong>Tap the "Start 5 Sessions Free" button.</p><p><strong>3. </strong>Choose "Focus" on the Welcome screen.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d83f4c12e22af2dc576c9f1-1242/2 welcome screen.png" border="0" alt="2 welcome screen" data-mce-source="Laura McCamy/Business Insider" data-mce-caption="There are a number of options when you first start." /><p class="source"><span>Laura McCamy/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">There are a number of options when you first start.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><strong>4. </strong>On the Improve Focus screen, you're faced with three choices: "More Work Done," "Less Distractions," or "Less Procrastination." If you're not sure which one to choose, don't worry. All three choices take you to the same place. Your choice will help the app choose your first soundscape, but you won't be stuck with that. You can change to a different channel if you want.</p><p><strong>5. </strong>One of the things that Brain.fm can help you with is creating good work habits. The next screen you'll see is the Create a Habit screen. You can set an alert to remind you to turn on the app at a certain time each day. The default is a 90 minute session starting at 9:00 am. Once you tap the "Continue" button, your reminder is set. If you don't want to use this feature, tap "Skip Creating a Habit" at the bottom of the screen.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d83f3a72e22af1cb67e50f5-1242/4 create a habit.png" border="0" alt="4 create a habit" data-mce-source="Laura McCamy/Business Insider" data-mce-caption="If you don't want to set a reminder right off the bat, you can skip the habit section." /><p class="source"><span>Laura McCamy/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">If you don't want to set a reminder right off the bat, you can skip the habit section.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><strong>6. </strong>The next screen is Save Your Settings. To use your free test sessions or create an account, sign in with Facebook or create an account with your email.</p><p><strong>7. </strong>After you sign up, the app will launch you into a 90-minute session.</p><p><strong>8. </strong>You can pause and resume your session whenever you like. You can also tap the "Explore" icon at the bottom right of your screen to try out different sounds capes. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d83f5052e22af497a7d5702-1242/9 explore.png" border="0" alt="9 explore" data-mce-source="Laura McCamy/Business Insider" data-mce-caption="Even during your free trial, you can test out every soundscape." /><p class="source"><span>Laura McCamy/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">Even during your free trial, you can test out every soundscape.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2><strong>How to use the Brain.fm app to help you focus</strong></h2><p>Brain.fm suggests using headphones to get the most benefit from the sound modulation that helps your brain focus. You can also customize your experience in a few different ways.</p><p><strong>1. </strong>Tap the menu in the top-right of your screen to make changes to your account. Tap "Reminders" in this menu, and you can make changes to the daily reminder you set up earlier on the My Habits screen.</p><p><strong>2. </strong>Tap the "My Library" icon in the bottom center of your screen to see which soundscapes you've recently played. You can mark your favorites with a heart.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d83f57f2e22af2df166e6ea-1242/12 my library.png" border="0" alt="12 my library" data-mce-source="Laura McCamy/Business Insider" data-mce-caption="You can save your favorite soundscapes to return to later." /><p class="source"><span>Laura McCamy/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">You can save your favorite soundscapes to return to later.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><strong>3. </strong>When you start a new session, you can choose how long you want it to play for, or ask for nonstop play ("Infinity"). Choosing a 30- or 60-minute session can be a great way to remind yourself to take regular breaks when you're doing intense work.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d83f5a52e22af401529de34-1242/13 set time.jpeg" border="0" alt="13 set time" data-mce-source="Laura McCamy/Business Insider" data-mce-caption="You can customize how long you want your sessions to be." /><p class="source"><span>Laura McCamy/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">You can customize how long you want your sessions to be.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><strong>4. </strong>You can also tell the app what type of work you'll be doing during your focus session. The app will then select a soundscape that's conducive to your level of concentration and creativity. Of course, you can always choose your own soundscape if you like another one better.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d83f6032e22af402361da3e-1242/14 type of work.jpeg" border="0" alt="14 type of work" data-mce-source="Laura McCamy/Business Insider" data-mce-caption="You can choose between a number of different working types to help you focus." /><p class="source"><span>Laura McCamy/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">You can choose between a number of different working types to help you focus.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The Brain.fm app can do more than help you work. The app also has soundscapes built to help your brain relax, lull you to sleep, and get you into the right groove for meditation.</p><h2><strong>Related coverage from</strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/tech-how-to"><strong> How To Do Everything: Tech</strong></a><strong>:</strong></h2><ul><li><h3><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-spotify-premium-on-iphone">How to sign up for Spotify Premium on your iPhone or desktop computer, and get a free trial</a></h3></li><li><h3><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-cancel-pandora-premium-on-iphone">How to cancel a Pandora Premium subscription on your iPhone in 2 ways</a></h3></li><li><h3><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-listen-to-podcasts-on-iphone">How to listen to podcasts on your iPhone, where you can access over 700,000 podcasts from Apple's catalog</a></h3></li><li><h3><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-download-free-music-on-iphone">The best apps for downloading and listening to free music on your iPhone</a></h3></li></ul><p class="tagline"><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/intelligence/top-3-biggest-smartphone-trends?IR=T&amp;itm_source=businessinsider&amp;itm_medium=ctgr_bii&amp;itm_term=ctgr_leadgen&amp;itm_content=iphone&amp;itm_campaign=top-3-biggest-smartphone-trends"><img src="https://static.businessinsider.com/image/5cb0b5e265fe294978596ce3" alt="Exclusive FREE Slide Deck: Top 3 Biggest Smartphone Trends by Business Insider Intelligence" border="0" style="margin: 0 auto !important; width: 100% !important; min-width: 280px !important; max-width: 640px !important" /></a></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-use-iphone-new-spam-call-blocking-feature-ios13-2019-9">How to use the iPhone's new spam-call-blocking feature</a></h3>        <div>            <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/vQcIMECE-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script>        </div>    </div>

Brain.fm is an app designed to help you focus at work - here's how to use it

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5c9d0b397563b0288c5b3ef9-1600/gravitational-wave-detector-laser-mirror-ligo-virgo-worker-suit.jpg" border="0" alt="gravitational wave detector laser mirror ligo virgo worker suit" data-mce-source="EGO/Virgo Collaboration/Perciballi" data-mce-caption="A worker inspects quartz fibers that suspend a mirror inside the Virgo gravitational-wave observatory." data-link="http://home.infn.it/it/comunicazione/comunicati-stampa/3485-onde-gravitazionali-ligo-e-virgo-tornano-all-ascolto-dell-universo"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://home.infn.it/it/comunicazione/comunicati-stampa/3485-onde-gravitazionali-ligo-e-virgo-tornano-all-ascolto-dell-universo">EGO/Virgo Collaboration/Perciballi</a></span></p><p class="caption">A worker inspects quartz fibers that suspend a mirror inside the Virgo gravitational-wave observatory.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>Colliding black holes and neutron stars create ripples in spacetime, called <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/gravitational-waves" target="_blank" rel="noopener">gravitational waves</a>. These were "heard" <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/objects-gravitational-waves-can-detect-2016-2/?r=AU&amp;IR=T">for the first time</a> in September 2015.&#xa0;</li><li>On Monday, a pair of gravitational-wave detectors called <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/ligo" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LIGO</a> will turn back on after 6 months of downtime and upgrades.</li><li>To boost its power, the experiment will now work with a sister machine in Italy called Virgo.</li><li>Physicists expect the next period of searching for colliding <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/black-holes" target="_blank" rel="noopener">black holes</a> to last a year and be 40% more sensitive than before.</li></ul><p>One of the most remarkable experiments in history - a pair of giant machines that listen for ripples in spacetime <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/objects-gravitational-waves-can-detect-2016-2/?r=AU&amp;IR=T">called gravitational waves</a> - will wake up from a half-year nap on Monday. And it will be about 40% stronger than before.</p><p>That experiment is called the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (<a href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/">LIGO</a>); it consists of two giant, L-shaped detectors that together solved a 100-year-old mystery posed by Albert Einstein.&#xa0;</p><p>In 1915, Einstein predicted the existence of ripples in the fabric of space However, he didn't think these gravitational waves would ever be detected - they seemed too weak to pick up amid all the noise and vibrations on Earth. For 100 years, it seemed Einstein was right.</p><p>Even as hundreds of scientists worked on LIGO from 2002 into 2015, they failed to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/gravitational-waves-music-universe-2016-2">"hear"</a> any waves. This was despite predictions that collisions of two black holes should make gravitational waves at detectable levels.</p><p>But that 13-year slump ended in September 2015, when an upgraded "advanced" LIGO detected its <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gravitational-waves-detected-first-time-ligo-2016-2">first gravitational waves</a>: signals from the merger of two black holes some 1.3 billion light-years away. The following December, the team <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/new-gravitational-waves-discovery-2016-6">detected a second collision event</a>. By 2017, three researchers who helped conceive of LIGO earned <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/2017-nobel-prize-in-physics-gravitational-waves-kip-thorne-rainer-weiss-barry-barish-2017-10">a Nobel Prize in Physics</a>.</p><p><keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">Science</keyword> hasn't been the same since. The global research team affiliated with LIGO has today made <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmmD72cFOU4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">11 detections</a> of massive collisions in deep space. Gravitational-wave astronomy is still in its infancy, though, and the teams behind each observatory are constantly scheming to improve the sensitivities of their machines.</p><p>In fact, LIGO is about to wake up from its second major slumber, following a series of hardware upgrades. The scientific collaboration expects the devices to be 40% more sensitive than in the previous run, which lasted from November 2016 through August 2017.</p><p>"We will surely detect many more gravitational waves from the types of sources we've seen so far," Peter Fritschel, LIGO's chief detector scientist at MIT, said in <a href="https://www.ligo.org/news/pr-O3resumes.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a press release</a>. "We're eager to see new events too, such as a merger of a black hole and a neutron star."</p><p>This third run of the observatory is expected to last a full year.</p><p>Here's how LIGO works, according to an <a href="https://ligo.caltech.edu/system/video_items/files/21/Einsteins_messengers_hi_res_Nov_17_WebM_720p.webm?1447873695">animation</a> created by researchers behind the experiment, and how recent improvements made it even more sensitive.</p><h2>How LIGO detects gravitational waves</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56957e57dd08959a768b47a1-2400/ligo-nsf.jpg" border="0" alt="ligo nsf laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory" data-mce-source="LIGO Laboratory/NSF" data-mce-caption="This L-shaped LIGO observatory in Hanford, Washington, is one of three gravitational wave detectors in operation." data-link="http://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/blueshift/index.php/2015/11/16/doing-astronomy-with-our-eyes-closed/"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/blueshift/index.php/2015/11/16/doing-astronomy-with-our-eyes-closed/">LIGO Laboratory/NSF</a></span></p><p class="caption">This L-shaped LIGO observatory in Hanford, Washington, is one of three gravitational wave detectors in operation.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p>LIGO is actually two different yet nearly identical instruments that work together.</p><p>The two L-shaped detectors - each with 2.5-mile-long arms - are separated by nearly 1,900 miles. One is at the Hanford Site in Washington (where Cold War-era nuclear weapons production happened) and the other is in Livingston, Louisiana.</p><p>Together, the detectors hunted for gravitational waves for years without any luck, until a new-and-improved "advanced" and upgraded LIGO came online in 2015.</p><p>One of the notable collisions it has observed since then<span>, unceremoniously dubbed "GW170817" and announced in October 2017, came from <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/neutron-stars-crash-ligo-gravitational-waves-periodic-elements-2017-10">two neutron stars smashing together</a>. Astronomers who saw the signal alerted telescopes around the globe to zero in on the event. The resulting "multi-messenger" observations suggested that the cataclysm spewed unfathomable amounts of silver, gold, platinum, and other freshly created elements on <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/where-atoms-came-from-periodic-table-2017-1">the Periodic Table</a> into space.</span></p><p><span><em><strong>Read more</strong>: </em><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-gold-created-in-neutron-star-collision-2017-10"><em>Astronomers detected 100 Earths' worth of gold being forged in space - here's how much it's worth</em></a></span></p><p>To make their observations, each LIGO detector shoots out a laser beam and splits it in two. One beam is sent down a 2.5-mile long tube, the other down an identical yet perpendicular tube.</p><p>The beams bounce off mirrors and converge back near the beam splitter.</p><p>The light waves return at equal length, and line up in such a way that they cancel each other out.</p><p>As a result, the light detector part of the instrument doesn't see any light.</p><p>But when a gravitational wave comes through, it warps spacetime - making one tube longer and the other shorter. This rhythmic stretching-and-squeezing distortion continues until the wave passes.</p><p>When this kind of interference happens, the two waves of light aren't equal lengths when they return, so they don't line up and neutralize each other. That means the detector would record some flashes of light.</p><p>A physicist measuring those changes in brightness would thus be measuring and observing gravitational waves.</p><p>This setup is extraordinarily sensitive. When a wave passes by, the arm's length changes by less than 1/10,000th of the width of a subatomic proton particle, <a href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/ligos-ifo">according to LIGO</a>.</p><p>That also means a detector can be disturbed by the vibration of trucks driving on nearby roads or even a slight breeze.</p><p>That's why there are two LIGO instruments: If they detect a signal occurring at exactly the same time, it's likely that a huge gravitational wave is passing by and through Earth.</p><p>The events that cause these ripples in space must be unimaginably powerful. So far, LIGO has confirmed it detected merging black holes. When two black holes merge, the collision can instantly convert several suns' worth of mass into pure gravitational-wave energy, which is why we can detect them on Earth from more than a billion miles away.</p><h2>Strogner laser beams, better mirrors, and 'squeezed' light</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5c9d0b3909b6034b6f4ba003-2400/gravitational-wave-detector-laser-mirror-ligo-virgo-workers-suits.jpg" border="0" alt="gravitational wave detector laser mirror ligo virgo workers suits" data-mce-source="Caltech/MIT/LIGO Lab" data-mce-caption="Technicians inspect the coating of a mirror inside the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO: a gravitational-wave observatory." data-link="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/optics"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/optics">Caltech/MIT/LIGO Lab</a></span></p><p class="caption">Technicians inspect the coating of a mirror inside the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO: a gravitational-wave observatory.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p>Still, such events are relatively rare and their signatures are extraordinarily weak.</p><p>LIGO's last upgrade took 10 months in 2016 and boosted its sensitivity by about 25%. The newest upgrade took six months, ends on April 1, and added 40% increase in sensitivity on top of the last upgrade to LIGO.</p><p><span>That increased sensitivity should help scientists pinpoint the locations of neutron star collisions, for example, up to 550 million light-years away, or about 190 million light-years farther away than it could before.</span></p><p>That jump comes from doubling the power of each LIGO facility's lasers. Each machine also got five of eight mirrors upgraded, as well as new hardware to catch and reduce stray light. It can also now "squeeze" photons of light (to clear up noisy data) using principles of quantum physics.</p><p>"We had to break the fibers holding the mirrors and very carefully take out the optics and replace them," Calum Torrie, the head of LIGO's mechanical-optical engineering department at Caltech, said in <a href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20190326" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a press release</a>. "It was an enormous engineering undertaking."</p><p><a href="http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/vicky/">Vicky Kalogera</a>, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University and LIGO, previously told Business Insider that the experiment could ultimately detect 100 collisions per year - that is, with the help of <span>a third detector called <a href="http://www.virgo-gw.eu/">Virgo</a>, </span>a new facility called KAGRA being built in Japan, and <a href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/ligo-sister-facilities" target="_blank" rel="noopener">other gravitational wave detectors</a>.</p><p>"This has opened a new window to what we can detect in the universe," <a href="http://phys.columbia.edu/~ibartos/">Imre Bartos</a>, a physicist at Columbia University and LIGO, previously told Business Insider. "We can detect this, we can now see gravitational waves. But the real exciting things are what we discover with these gravitational waves."</p><p><em>This is an updated version of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ligo-detecting-gravitational-waves-more-sensitive-2016-11">a story</a> published on November 30, 2016.</em></p><div><div style="position:relative; padding-bottom:calc(52.77% + 44px)"><iframe src="https://gfycat.com/ifr/HugeCompleteHoopoe" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="100%" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div></div><div><div style="position:relative; padding-bottom:calc(52.77% + 44px)"><iframe src="https://gfycat.com/ifr/EagerPhysicalBasilisk" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="100%" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div></div><div><div style="position:relative; padding-bottom:calc(58.87% + 44px)"><iframe src="https://gfycat.com/ifr/ActualFailingAnnelid" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="100%" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div></div><div><div style="position:relative; padding-bottom:calc(58.87% + 44px)"><iframe src="https://gfycat.com/ifr/CapitalFearlessAnura" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="100%" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div></div><div><div style="position:relative; padding-bottom:calc(54.33% + 44px)"><iframe src="https://gfycat.com/ifr/TimelyAngryHeterodontosaurus" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="100%" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/2017-nobel-prize-in-physics-gravitational-waves-kip-thorne-rainer-weiss-barry-barish-2017-10">Scientists won the Nobel Prize for detecting gravitational waves - here's why that matters</a></h3>        <div>            <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/zsiNAF8F-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script>        </div>    </div>

An experiment that solved a 100-year-old mystery posed by Einstein is about to turn back on - and it's more powerful than ever

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57618d88dd0895146b8b4a17-1200/localization comparison 2.jpg" alt="Localization Comparison 2" data-mce-source="LIGO" /><p class="source"><span>LIGO</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>For more than 100 years, scientists searched for signs of gravitational waves, or ripples in spacetime that Einstein predicted back in 1916.</p><p>Nearly six decades passed since astronomers <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/gravitational-waves-ligo-1974-hulse-taylor-2016-2">confirmed their existence</a>, but until September 2015, scientists had yet to prove their existence. (Fun fact: <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/physics-einstein-got-wrong-2015-11">Even Einstein didn't believe</a> it could be done.)</p><p>And now they've done it again.</p><p>On December 26, 2015, astronomers got a late Christmas gift: A <a href="https://www.techinsider.io/new-gravitational-waves-discovery-2016-6">second gravitational wave signal</a> emanating from a black-hole collision some 1.4 billion light-years away, confirming that the era of gravitational wave astronomy has begun.</p><p>Even before the waves were conclusively recorded, Cardiff University made an online game called <a href="http://www.blackholehunter.org/">Black Hole Hunter</a> to show exactly how difficult it can be to pick out the music of the universe out of the cosmic din.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56bbcfc2dd0895e27a8b4798-1078-809/black-hole-hunter-intro-2016-02-10-at-21553-pm.png" alt="Black Hole Hunter Intro 2016 02 10 at 2.15.53 PM" border="0" /></div></div></div><br /><br />The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is an enormous experiment that's spearheaded by MIT and Caltech.</p><p>It uses two giant L-shaped detectors in the US to hunt for the elusive waves, which are emitted by giant exploding stars, colliding black holes, merging neutron stars, and other cataclysmic events in space.</p><p>LIGO captures the signal of the waves as vibrations, which can be transmuted into sound.</p><p>Black Hole Hunter lets you listen to this sound in its purest form - but then asks you to find it in one of four very static-filled sound files:</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56bbcfc2dd0895e27a8b4799-1003-752/bhh-level-5-2016-02-10-at-21748-pm-1.png" alt="BHH LEVEL 5 2016 02 10 at 2.17.48 PM" border="0" /><p class="source"><span>Black Hole Hunter/Cardiff University</span></p><p class="caption">Looking for gravitational waves with Black Hole Hunter.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The static is there for a good reason.</p><p>When scientists try to pick up the ripples of spacetime through LIGO, the signal can get cluttered with the vibrations of basically everything else: earthquakes, traffic, or even a lab tech sneezing.</p><p>The sound Black Hole Hunter plays sounds like a huge, reverberating zipper. In each level, the pitch changes and gets quieter in relation to the static.</p><p>Like any good video game, you get three lives before your number's up.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56bbcfc2dd0895e27a8b479a-1027-770/bhh-fail-2016-02-10-at-21959-pm.png" alt="BHH fail 2016 02 10 at 2.19.59 PM" border="0" /><p class="source"><span>Black Hole Hunter/Cardiff University</span></p><p class="caption">You can't win them all.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>I tried my hand at it, and until level 6, it wasn't actually that difficult to separate the signal from the noise. Level 7, however, was pretty maddening.</p><p>The key is to listen very, very closely for the fuzzy rising tone at the end of the wave signal.<br /><br /><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56bbcfc2dd0895e27a8b479b-1159-787/black hole hunter game won 2016-02-10 at 2.20.07 pm.png" alt="black hole hunter game won 2016 02 10 at 2.20.07 PM" border="0" data-mce-source="Black Hole Hunter/Cardiff University" data-mce-caption="Maybe LIGO's hiring?" /><p class="source"><span>Black Hole Hunter/Cardiff University</span></p><p class="caption">Maybe LIGO's hiring?</p></div><p></p></div></div>And don't be fooled by the shape of the samples: They won't necessarily widen toward the end, like the representation of the pure signal (in white).</p><p>As you progress, the game drops fun facts to keep you going. For example: Did you know that gravitational waves observations could help tell astronomers if a dying star will ultimately end up as black holes or some other compact object?</p><p>The game's goal isn't to stump nerdy journalists, but get people interested in one of the greatest physics problems of our time. The interactive, first launched in 2008, links to <a href="http://www.einsteinathome.org/">LIGO's public Einstein@Home</a> project, which at one point used volunteers' computers to crunch data in the search for gravitational waves.</p><p><strong>So how does LIGO actually work?</strong></p><p>It is (relatively) simple: When a big, dense object in space does something sudden, gravitational waves fan out in all directions and eventually make their way to the Earth, slightly squeezing and stretching space along the way.</p><p>To see those tiny disturbances - akin to noticing a pencil eraser has been added to the end of the Milky Way - LIGO shoots a laser through a beam splitter, sending two beams of light along two perpendicular arms, each 2.5 miles long.</p><p>The light passes through a first mirror near the base of arm, then to a mirror at the end. From there the beam bounces back and forth between the two mirrors, increasing the total distance it travels.</p><p>When gravitational waves pass by, the length of each arm stretches and shortens rhythmically with the wave's pulse - and so does the lengthened beam.</p><p>When the waves of light return to the detector at the base of both arms, they're slightly offset from each other. Instead of a steady beam, the detector picks up the beam's wiggling.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56bbcfc2dd0895e27a8b479c-886-546/ligo 2016-02-10 at 2.39.23 pm.png" alt="LIGO 2016 02 10 at 2.39.23 PM" border="0" data-mce-source="LIGO/NSF" data-mce-caption="Illustration of how LIGO's interferometer works." /><p class="source"><span>LIGO/NSF</span></p><p class="caption">Illustration of how LIGO's interferometer works.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><br /><br /></p><p>When LIGO detectors saw their laser light flicker around the same time, it's time to start looking into whether the signal is a gravitational wave, or a possible misfire. If confirmed, those waves add to the body of knowledge that will <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/gravitational-waves-ligo-1974-hulse-taylor-2016-2">radically alter our understanding of the universe</a>.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/gravitational-waves-hear-black-hole-chirp-ligo-2016-6">Gravitational waves just helped us 'hear' the birth of another massive black hole</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="syN3k1NDE6NvMk85AETKCp9TqhJi-oPr" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'syN3k1NDE6NvMk85AETKCp9TqhJi-oPr',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

This online game shows you how ridiculously hard it is to spot gravitational waves

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56bbcfc2dd0895e27a8b4797-1260-674/pulsar20131106-full.jpg" alt="gravitational waves" border="0" data-mce-source="NASA" data-link="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/universe/20131106/pulsar20131106-full.jpg" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/universe/20131106/pulsar20131106-full.jpg">NASA</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div>For more than 100 years scientists have been searching for signs of gravitational waves, or ripples in spacetime that Einstein predicted back in 1916.</p><p>Nearly six decades passed since astronomers first <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/gravitational-waves-ligo-1974-hulse-taylor-2016-2">confirmed their existence</a>, but detecting the waves themselves has proved to be very difficult. (Even <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/physics-einstein-got-wrong-2015-11">Einstein didn't believe</a> it could be done.)</p><p>But now there are rumblings that researchers have finally observed gravitational waves in action and will <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/gravitational-wave-nature-ligo-february-11-2016-2">announce as much on Feb. 11</a>.</p><p>Until then, you can play along with the search - and see how hard it is - using an online game called <a href="http://www.blackholehunter.org/">Black Hole Hunter</a> by Cardiff University.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56bbcfc2dd0895e27a8b4798-1078-809/black-hole-hunter-intro-2016-02-10-at-21553-pm.png" alt="Black Hole Hunter Intro 2016 02 10 at 2.15.53 PM" border="0" /></div></div></div><br /><br />The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is an enormous experiment that's spearheaded by MIT and Caltech.</p><p>It uses two giant L-shaped detectors in the US to hunt for the elusive waves, which are emitted by giant exploding stars, colliding black holes, merging neutron stars, and other cataclysmic events in space.</p><p>LIGO captures the signal of the waves as vibrations, which can be transmuted into sound.</p><p>Black Hole Hunter lets you listen to this sound in its purest form - but then asks you to find it in one of four very static-filled sound files:</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56bbcfc2dd0895e27a8b4799-1003-752/bhh-level-5-2016-02-10-at-21748-pm-1.png" alt="BHH LEVEL 5 2016 02 10 at 2.17.48 PM" border="0" /><p class="source"><span>Black Hole Hunter/Cardiff University</span></p><p class="caption">Looking for gravitational waves with Black Hole Hunter.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The static is there for a good reason.</p><p>When scientists try to pick up the ripples of spacetime through LIGO, the signal can get cluttered with the vibrations of basically everything else: earthquakes, traffic, or even a lab tech sneezing.</p><p>The sound Black Hole Hunter plays sounds like a huge, reverberating zipper. In each level, the pitch changes and gets quieter in relation to the static.</p><p>Like any good video game, you get three lives before your number's up.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56bbcfc2dd0895e27a8b479a-1027-770/bhh-fail-2016-02-10-at-21959-pm.png" alt="BHH fail 2016 02 10 at 2.19.59 PM" border="0" /><p class="source"><span>Black Hole Hunter/Cardiff University</span></p><p class="caption">You can't win them all.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>I tried my hand at it, and until level 6, it wasn't actually that difficult to separate the signal from the noise. Level 7, however, was pretty maddening.</p><p>The key is to listen very, very closely for the fuzzy rising tone at the end of the wave signal.<br /><br /><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56bbcfc2dd0895e27a8b479b-1159-787/black hole hunter game won 2016-02-10 at 2.20.07 pm.png" alt="black hole hunter game won 2016 02 10 at 2.20.07 PM" border="0" data-mce-source="Black Hole Hunter/Cardiff University" data-mce-caption="Maybe LIGO's hiring?" /><p class="source"><span>Black Hole Hunter/Cardiff University</span></p><p class="caption">Maybe LIGO's hiring?</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>And don't be fooled by the shape of the samples: They won't necessarily widen toward the end, like the representation of the pure signal (in white).</p><p>As you progress, the game drops fun facts to keep you going. For example: Did you know that gravitational waves observations could help tell astronomers if a dying star will ultimately end up as black holes or some other compact object?</p><p>The game's goal isn't to stump nerdy journalists, but get people interested in one of the greatest physics problems of our time. The interactive, first launched in 2008, links to <a href="http://www.einsteinathome.org/">LIGO's public Einstein@Home</a> project, which at one point used volunteers' computers to crunch data in the search for gravitational waves.</p><p><strong>So how does LIGO actually work?</strong></p><p>It is (relatively) simple: When a big, dense object in space does something sudden, gravitational waves fan out in all directions and eventually make their way to the Earth, slightly squeezing and stretching space along the way.</p><p>To see those tiny disturbances - akin to noticing a pencil eraser has been added to the end of the Milky Way - LIGO shoots a laser through a beam splitter, sending two beams of light along two perpendicular arms, each 2.5 miles long.</p><p>The light passes through a first mirror near the base of arm, then to a mirror at the end. From there the beam bounces back and forth between the two mirrors, increasing the total distance it travels.</p><p>When gravitational waves pass by, the length of each arm stretches and shortens rhythmically with the wave's pulse - and so does the lengthened beam.</p><p>When the waves of light return to the detector at the base of both arms, they're slightly offset from each other. Instead of a steady beam, the detector picks up the beam's wiggling.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56bbcfc2dd0895e27a8b479c-886-546/ligo 2016-02-10 at 2.39.23 pm.png" alt="LIGO 2016 02 10 at 2.39.23 PM" border="0" data-mce-source="LIGO/NSF" data-mce-caption="Illustration of how LIGO's interferometer works." /><p class="source"><span>LIGO/NSF</span></p><p class="caption">Illustration of how LIGO's interferometer works.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><br /><br /></p><p>If both LIGO detectors see their laser light flicker around the same time, it has indeed detected the waves - and the event will <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/gravitational-waves-ligo-1974-hulse-taylor-2016-2">radically alter our understanding of the universe</a>.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/einsten-ligo-measures-gravitational-waves-2016-2">Einstein's wildest prediction from 100 years ago is turning out to be true</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="huMm10MDE65AaqssTMIirX0Ti2U5bUfO" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'huMm10MDE65AaqssTMIirX0Ti2U5bUfO',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

You Searched For "rhythmic noise" and got 13 results

Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore’s Boeing spacecraft was giving off a strange, pulsating “sonar-like” pings

Ashmita Gupta

If you love the sound of thunder or crashing waves, brown noise may help you focus or get to sleep

Devon Firestone,Alex Dimitriu

New propellers with looped blades could help make the oceans quiet again, sparing both marine life and the climate

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

An autistic teen was unable to communicate for 16 years. Once given the tools to speak, his parents experienced a revelation: Their son wrote a symphony.

Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert

Auditory specialists share ways to create peaceful soundscapes in your space

Sophia Mitrokostas

An experiment that solved a 100-year-old mystery posed by Einstein just got up to 50% more powerful by squeezing light

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

A powerful experiment that cracked a 100-year-old mystery posed by Einstein just got a huge upgrade

Morgan McFall-Johnsen,Dave Mosher

How Grammy award winner, Billie Eilish, harnesses the power of ASMR in her music

Meredith Geaghan-Breiner,Justin Gmoser

Black holes can produce light when they collide, new research shows — astronomers just saw the first-ever 'flare' from a spacetime-bending merger

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

Brain.fm is an app designed to help you focus at work - here's how to use it

Laura McCamy

An experiment that solved a 100-year-old mystery posed by Einstein is about to turn back on - and it's more powerful than ever

Dave Mosher

This online game shows you how ridiculously hard it is to spot gravitational waves

Sarah Kramer

See how hard it is to detect gravitational waves by playing this maddening online game

Sarah Kramer