As the universe expanded and the density decreased enough, photons could finally escape and light started traveling freely.
Most of what we know about the early universe is based on this leftover radiation from the Big Bang.
They enable us to investigate phenomena in which gravity, instead of light, is the messenger.
40% off TNW Conference!
This makes them very hard to detect.
This occurred when the universe was a fraction of a second old, immediately after the end of inflation.
The earlier it was produced, the smaller the corresponding wavelength and the higher the frequency.
The era immediately after the end of inflation is what we are aiming to probe with our new project.
There are also other possible sources that would produce high-frequency gravitational waves in the more recent universe.
These are both hypothetical entities thought to exist that have never been observed.
Tiny machinery
There are a couple of clear advantages of high-frequency detectors.
The length of the Ligo arms, for instance, is four kilometers.
Aerial view of LIGO facility in Hanford, Washington.Caltech/wikipedia,CC BY-SA
Detecting high-frequency gravitational waves is hard though.
As high-frequency gravitational waves detectors are smaller, the variation to be detected would be even tinier.
But we need to improve it a bit more to detect gravitational waves from the early universe.
Supporting this technological development is whatour projectis all about.
