While telescopes search for black holes and mysterious particles, a small device in Wales is exploring something even more useful - the ripples of space-time themselves. Scientists at Cardiff University have created the world's most sensitive tabletop interferometer, a device capable of measuring variations so minute that they would be less than a trillionth of the thickness of a human hair.
Dubbed QUEST, the experiment is basically looking for gravitational waves, those ripples in the fabric of the universe predicted by Einstein, which are normally detected at low frequencies when black holes collide or neutron stars merge, but what researchers are looking for with this technology is something slightly different.
Very high frequency waves that could have been formed in the first moments of the Big Bang during the collapse of primordial black holes, phenomena that until today escape human observation, to achieve this, physicists used a miniaturized version of interferometry used in giant observatories such as Lego and Veggo, combining laser aces reflected in mirrors to detect almost imperceptible alterations in space.
By correlating data from two independent interferometers, the team managed to eliminate local noise such as seismic vibrations or temperature variations and isolate possible real fluctuations in the fabric of space-time. According to Abhinav Patra, lead author of the study, the idea is to discover if space-time is truly quantized, that is, if it is composed of discrete units such as space-time atoms.
Professor Hartmut Grote, co-author of the research, explained that the Quest is an interferometric approach to directly investigate the limits of quantum mechanics and relativity, after 4 years of development and calibration, the system is ready for its next phase, observations that will last entire months in search of the smallest fluctuations imaginable.
If successful, the Quest could help reveal how space-time really works on a microscopic scale and perhaps even uncover hidden connections between dark matter, vacuum energy and gravitational fields. In short, the smallest of experiments could be about to answer the biggest of questions. Is the universe continuous or is it made up of invisible fragments of reality?
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