WarpLab

What am I looking at?

You're watching two massive objects — black holes or neutron stars — spiraling into each other and merging. The rippling grid is spacetime itself, bending under their gravity. The sound is the gravitational wave signal, shifted into the range of human hearing.

Scenes: Merger — real events from LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA on a deforming spacetime grid
Sandbox — build your own binary, tweak masses and spins
Black Hole — orbit a ray-traced Schwarzschild black hole
N-Body — gravitational simulator with collision physics

View modes (⚙): Explorer — clean, minimal interface
Student — detailed labels and physics equations
Researcher — full data with uncertainties, equations, and data export

Masses: How heavy each object is, measured in solar masses (M☉ = our Sun's mass)
Chirp mass: A combined mass that determines how the signal "chirps" — the key parameter detectors measure
Distance: How far away this happened, in megaparsecs (1 Mpc ≈ 3.26 million light-years)
Final mass: The mass of the merged remnant — always less than the sum of the two original objects
Energy radiated: Mass converted into gravitational wave energy (E = mc²). This is the "missing" mass
Effective spin: Whether the objects spin in the same direction (+1) or opposite (−1). Zero means no net spin alignment
Redshift: How much the universe expanded while the waves traveled to us — higher means older and farther
SNR: Signal-to-noise ratio. Higher = clearer detection. GW150914 had SNR 24, extremely loud
Confidence (p_astro): Probability this is a real astrophysical event vs. detector noise. > 0.99 means near-certain
Next-generation detectors: The Einstein Telescope — a planned underground observatory with 10 km arms — will be about 10× more sensitive than today's LIGO/Virgo, hearing roughly 1000× the volume of space. In Researcher mode its design-sensitivity curve (green) overlays the noise-curve chart.

Keyboard shortcuts: Space Play / Pause • S Speed • M Map • P Screenshot • / Search • T Tours
Embed on your site: Use an iframe with URL params:
?embed=true&scene=blackhole
Scenes: merger, sandbox, blackhole, nbody

Teacher Pack

Lesson plans and student worksheets tied to the guided tours. Each pack covers a set of real LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA events — download the printable PDF or the editable markdown source.

Classroom mode

Run a locked, distraction-free presentation. The sidebar, menus, and settings are hidden, and a presenter bar steps through a fixed event sequence — students cannot reach settings or switch scenes.

Start classroom mode

Kiosk / exhibition mode

Run WarpLab unattended on an exhibition screen. All menus are hidden and an attract loop auto-cycles through scenes and landmark events; visitor input pauses it, and a long idle resets everything for the next person.

Start kiosk mode

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What am I looking at?

Gravitational Wave Events

Guided Tours

Teacher Pack