Helioseismology and Gravitational Waves

The universe is expected to be permeated by a stochastic background of gravitational radiation of astrophysical and cosmological origin. This background is capable of exciting oscillations in solar-like stars. Here we show that solar-like oscillators can be employed as giant hydrodynamical detectors for such a background in the muHz to mHz frequency range, which has remained essentially unexplored until today. We demonstrate this approach by using high-precision radial velocity data for the Sun to constrain the normalized energy density of the stochastic gravitational-wave background around 0.11 mHz. These results open up the possibility for asteroseismic missions like CoRoT and Kepler to probe fundamental physics. See: An upper bound from helioseismology on the stochastic background of gravitational waves

***

The heart-shaped vibrations for the star KIC12253350.

The search for distant planets starts with the vibrations of their stars, and in those vibrations lies a kind of music.

See: Listening to the Stars

***

This page has links to sound files that are "sonification of light curves" of Kepler stars. The light curves contain certain frequencies of brightness variation that are akin to sound waves, but the frequencies are not audible to the human ear. In the sonification process, those inaudible frequencies are analyzed by a mathematical technique called fourier analysis and then scaled to frequencies that the human ear can hear. See: Kepler Star Sounds

9700322