Optical resonators

Researchers have built a small but powerful detector to find gravitational waves in a hidden frequency range. The discovery could reveal unseen black hole activity and echoes from the early universe. Illustration: depositphotos.com

The small device that will open a new window to the universe: a compact gravitational wave detector for the millihertz range

UK researchers present a desktop detector based on optical resonators and atomic clocks, which opens access to the “middle domain” of gravitational waves and could reveal binary white dwarfs, black hole mergers and a stochastic background – and a bridge