Cosmology with gravitational waves

Why are gravitational waves important in astrophysics?
The gravitational waves as we understand them are going to bring us very different kinds of information about the universe that you could never see with electromagnetic waves.
This timeline of the universe over 13.8 billion years, with stars emerging about 180 million years after the Big Bang..

Gravitational waves, predicted in general relativity, interact very weakly with matter, and therefore the universe has been transparent to them since shortly after the Big Bang. As a result, they provide a potentially new probe of early universe cosmology, that is, if we can detect them.

Why are gravitational wave antennas omni-directional?

There are several reasons why this is so:

• Gravitational wave antennas are essentially omni-directional

with their response better than 50% of the root mean square over 75% of the sky (see Figure 4

right panel

recalling that the rms response is 2/5 of the peak).
Hence, data analysis systems will have to carry out all-sky searches for sources.

Cosmology with gravitational waves

Why are gravitational waves important in astrophysics?

Why are gravitational wave antennas omni-directional?