With gravity waves, every second makes a difference

When a gravitational wave reaches Earth, every second counts. So data processing speed is crucial when it comes to how much astronomers can learn from these space-time ripples.

"In an era of multimessenger astronomy, we have to shorten the time as much as possible so as to trigger the alert quickly enough for follow-up observations," said computer scientist Cao Junwei, who leads the Chinese team collaborating at the international Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).

In October, scientists from the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, together with astronomers around the world, declared they had detected a gravitational wave from the collision of binary neutron stars and corresponding electromagnetic signals - the first such direct observation ever made.