One of the most complex tasks of modern astronomy is the search for black holes formed after kilonova explosions. Dutch scientists have an app thanks to which amateurs can join the data analysis to speed up the process.
How to find newborn black holes
The Dutch Black Hole Consortium recently released a new version of its BlackHoleFinder app. Previously, this kilonova search program was only available in two languages, English and Dutch, but now the developers have added Spanish, German, Chinese, Bengali, Polish and Italian. As a result, scientists hope to attract people to use it.
Kilonova is the process of merging of two black holes. It is accompanied by the release of a large amount of energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation and gravitational waves, and its result is the birth of a black hole. Meanwhile, it is a very short-lived event that is only recorded for a very small amount of time.
In this case, it is better “heard” by gravitational wave detectors. But it has been possible to direct optical and radio telescopes to the sky in time to understand how radiation and space fluctuations relate to each other only once in 2017.
The problem is that when detectors “catch” a gravitational wave that lasts a few milliseconds, the accuracy of determining its source is hundreds of square degrees. Therefore, even if someone manages to react to this event with optical telescopes, he will have to scan a large area of the starry sky, on which he will then have to search for the source.
What amateurs will do
It is worth noting that simply scanning such a large area of the starry sky is already a problem. However, an important step has recently been made towards its solution. The new BlackGEM telescope operated in northern Chile. It is independently capable of doing most of this work. But someone else still has to find the most kilonovas among a lot of data.
That’s exactly what volunteer astronomers do with the BlackHoleFinder app. This is not an easy task at all, because there are quite a few signals of both man-made and natural origin that need to be distinguished from electromagnetic kilonovas waves.
Nowadays, they usually try to assign such tasks to specially trained neural networks. Employees of the Dutch Black Hole Search Consortium have also attempted to create artificial intelligence. It worked for a while, after which they came to the conclusion that people search black holes better after all.
And now they have a really incredible opportunity to be the discoverers of a black hole. Las Cumbres Observatory has several robotic telescopes with a mirror diameter of 400 mm. And recently its management has allowed amateurs to use them to search for kilonova. By detecting a suspicious signal with the BlackHoleFinder app, any user can point them at the desired area of the sky and get a better look at it.
According to phys.org
