Hunt for Black Holes Online

Cardiff University has created a new Black Hole Hunter game. In this game, you listen to audio files which are simulations of waveforms that might result from collisions of massive astronomical objects such as black holes and neutron stars. These signals are results of predictions based on theories of the gravitational waves that would result from such collisions, assuming that the theoretical gravitational waves do indeed exist.

Simulation of gravity waves from merging black holes (NASA, 2006)

More details on the game are available here, but the basic issue is that it's very difficult to detect these collisions amid the background noise picked up by these detectors. The game is created as part of the Summer Science Exhibition 2008 in London, to help illustrate the sort of work that real astrophysicists are performing on a regular basis.

While the game is fun, those interested in more pro-active work could join the Einstein@Home project, which is one of many research programs where participants install background software on their computer which uses dormant processing power to run advanced scientific algorithms. In this case, the idle processing power is used to search for spinning neutron stars (i.e. pulsars). Einstein@Home was begun as part of the World Year of Physics in 2005.