Gravitational Waves Reveal Secrets of Strange Quark Matter.

Gravitational waves generated by merging neutron stars could reveal the creation of ultra-dense quark-gluon matter, the most fundamental building blocks of matter. RIKEN researchers suggest that next-gen detectors, due within the next decade, could confirm this theory. The frequency of the gravitational waves from neutron-star mergers typically depends on how fast the neutron star rotates, and the team found that it should be possible to probe whether the quark phase exists in a neutron star by analyzing the frequency of its gravitational waves.