Galway Bay fm newsroom - A number of NUI Galway scientists have been selected by the European Space Agency for a major space study.
The study concerns gravitational waves in space which are ripples through space-time that occur during extreme events such as when massive stars collide or when black holes spiral into each other.
Three non-manned space crafts will be launched into space in 2034 to detect the gravitational waves.
The space crafts will be placed 2.5 million kilometres from each other to form a triangle that will follow Earth in its orbit around the sun.
They will detect changes in the Earth and sun's separations which are as small as one pico-meter, which is 100 times smaller than an atom.
Scientists from the Applied Optics Group at NUI Galway will have responsibility for ensuring that detecting these precise changes is possible.
Dr Nicholas Devaney from the group at NUIG says it's a fantastic opportunity for them.
