University of Birmingham - Front-row seats for the Big Bang

Physicists could play a key role in a planned space mission to study gravitational waves. A group from the University of Birmingham would play a key role in the mission, which the US National Research Council has recommended as one of Nasa's next two major space missions. Alberto Vecchio, reader in gravitational astrophysics at Birmingham's School of Physics and Astronomy, said the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna project would "allow us to witness the fireworks of a million solar-mass black holes merging at the centre of the most distant galaxies and peek into the first fraction of a second of the life of our Universe".