Gravitational wave detectors on Earth like Ligo and Virgo — or like those expected to fly into space by the 2030s, Lisa (Space antenna laser interferometer), a mission that will be led by the European Space Agency in cooperation with NASA – are interferometers. They do not operate directly like telescopes or regular glasses with mirrors and lenses.
However, it is theoretically possible to process the signals recorded by these devices to obtain images, certainly raw, somewhat similar to those we obtain in space with gamma-ray telescopes using another technique, which should show the images in the form of spots of light. , although it is not about electromagnetic waves, but about light waves.
Tens of millions of UCBs viewed by Lisa
As described in a post in Astronomical magazine So a team of researchers was able to simulate a predictable artificial picture by processing LISA observations that would show in a panoramic way the sources of gravitational waves in the Milky Way in the form of binary systems made up only of compact stars. This means selecting groups of stellar black holes, or stars. Neutrons, or even white dwarfs. They are called in English Ultra-small diodes (UCBs) and their orbital periods are less than one hour.
These sources will not be about to collide in the near future, so they will still be somewhat distant from each other, but not by much, which in this case means we will detect gravitational waves in the millihertz range (10).-3 Hertz). It is expected that there are tens of millions of UCBs in the galaxy.
