{"id":120166,"date":"2025-09-07T05:36:18","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T05:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/120166\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T05:36:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T05:36:18","slug":"we-could-spot-a-new-type-of-black-hole-thanks-to-a-mirror-wobbling-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/120166\/","title":{"rendered":"We could spot a new type of black hole thanks to a mirror-wobbling AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Black holes produce gravitational waves when they collide<\/p>\n

VICTOR de SCHWANBERG\/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Efforts to understand the universe could get a boost from an AI developed by Google DeepMind. The algorithm, which can reduce unwanted noise by up to 100 times, could allow the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) to spot a particular type of black hole that has so far eluded us.<\/p>\n

LIGO is designed to detect the gravitational waves produced when objects such as black holes<\/a> spiral into each other and collide. These waves cross the universe at the speed of light, but the fluctuations they cause in space-time are extremely small \u2013 10,000 times smaller than the nucleus of an atom<\/a>. Since its first observations 10 years ago<\/a>, LIGO has recorded such signals produced by nearly 100 black hole collisions.<\/p>\n

To do so, the experiment consists of two observatories in the US, each with two arms 4 kilometres long that are set perpendicular to each other. Lasers are beamed down each arm, reflected by precise mirrors at the end and then compared using an interferometer. The length of the arms is changed by a tiny amount as gravitational waves wash over them, and this is carefully recorded to build a picture of the origin of these signals.<\/p>\n

The problem is that such demanding accuracy is required that even distant ocean waves or clouds passing overhead can affect measurements. This noise can easily drown out signals, making some observations impossible. Dozens of major adjustments need to be made to filter out the worst of this noise, tweaking the orientation of mirrors and other equipment.<\/p>\n

Rana Adhikari<\/a> at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who worked with DeepMind to develop the new AI technology, says that attempting to automate these adjustments can ironically create more noise. \u201cThat controls noise has been bedevilling us for decades and decades \u2013 everything in this field has been blocked,\u201d says Adhikari. \u201cHow do you hold the mirrors so still without inducing noise? If you don\u2019t control them, the mirrors swing all over the place, and if you control it too much, then it sort of buzzes around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laura Nuttall<\/a> at the University of Portsmouth in the UK was one of the scientists who used to manually make these tweaks at LIGO. \u201cAs you move one thing, something else goes, and something else goes and something else goes,\u201d she says. \u201cYou\u2019d spend forever tweaking.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeepMind\u2019s new Deep Loop Shaping AI aims to reduce the level of noise from adjusting the mirrors at LIGO by up to 100 times. The AI was trained in a simulation before testing in the real world, and is effectively tasked with achieving two goals: reducing noise and minimising the number of adjustments it makes. \u201cOver time, by repeatedly doing it \u2013 it\u2019s like hundreds and thousands of trials that are running in simulation \u2013 the controller will sort of find what works and what doesn\u2019t work and find a really, really good policy,\u201d says Jonas Buchli at DeepMind.<\/p>\n

Alberto Vecchio<\/a> at the University of Birmingham, UK, who wasn\u2019t involved in the research but works on LIGO, says the AI is exciting, although there are many hurdles yet to overcome.<\/p>\n

Firstly, the technology has only been run for an hour in the real world on LIGO, so it needs to be shown that it can operate for weeks or even months at a time. Secondly, the technology has so far only been applied to one aspect of control, helping to stabilise the mirrors, and there are hundreds if not thousands of aspects it could conceivably be applied to.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s clearly just the first step, but I still think it\u2019s a very intriguing one. And clearly there is plenty of room for enormous progress,\u201d says Vecchio.<\/p>\n

If similar improvements could be made across the board, then he believes we could spot so-called intermediate-size black holes \u2013 for example those with masses around 1000 times that of our sun \u2013 a class of objects without any confirmed observations. The improvements would tend to occur on lower-frequency gravitational waves, where the length of wave is more susceptible to noise, and which are created by larger objects.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know black holes up to 100 solar masses. We know the black holes in our galaxy that are a million solar masses and above. What\u2019s in between?\u201d says Vecchio. \u201cPeople think there will be black holes at all these different mass ranges, but nobody has got uncontroversial experimental observational evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nuttall says that the new approach could also provide more detailed observation of the types of black hole we have already seen. \u201cThis is looking pretty damn good,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m super excited by this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jodrell<\/p>\n

Mysteries of the universe: Cheshire, England<\/p>\n

Spend a weekend with some of the brightest minds in science, as you explore the mysteries of the universe in an exciting programme that includes an excursion to see the iconic Lovell Telescope.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Topics:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Black holes produce gravitational waves when they collide VICTOR de SCHWANBERG\/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Efforts to understand the universe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,4975,1938,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-120166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-black-holes","tag-deepmind","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}