Question: How will growing mountain's help you with your project

Emma Dean answered on 16 Mar 2016:

I want to see if neutron stars emit gravitational wave signals that we could detect here on earth.

Neutron stars are very smooth, spherical (ball shaped) objects. The gravitational waves they emit are perfect circles. The detectors we have on earth have 2 arms which are put together in an L-shape. As a gravitational wave passes through, they stretch and squash each arm of the detector. If the wave is a perfect circle then both arms are stretched and squashed the same amount. To measure the wave we need one arm to be stretched or squashed more than the other.

If a neutron star has a mountain on it, then it no longer is a perfect sphere. This means that a gravitational wave emitted from the neutron star will stretch and squash one arm of the detector more than the other. We will then be able to measure the difference in the length of each arm.

My job is to see how big these mountains can grow. If we know how big the mountain is, then we can calculate how big a difference there will be in the length of the two arms of the detectors. This helps the scientists at the detectors find the signal in their data.