We were interviewed for a couple of artciles based off our publication in Physical Review Letters. In this work we simulate with high-precision the inspiral, merger and ringdown of binaries consisting of two non-spinning boson stars. The accuracy and longevity of gravitational wave signals generated in the process is sufficient to perform gravitational wave analysis and assess the impact of a hypothetical boson star signal on gravitational wave observations. Our results show that binary boson star binaries may be detected with present gravitational wave detectors, however whether they can be completely distinguished from binaries of black hole and neutron stars, is a more complicated question. In a nutshell, we demonstrate how sifficiently compact boson star binaries can be very easily mistaken for binary black holes, whilst more 'dilute' boson star binaries can stand out as sore thumbs in the data, exhibiting smoking-gun features. If this sounds interesting, I encourage out to checkout our interviews and artciles about our work below:
(i) Interview for the New Scientist: "Signals from exotic new stars could hide in gravitational wave data".
(ii) Interview for Plus: "Boson stars: Beyond vanilla".
(iii) Our work has also featured on the Faculty of Mathematics Insights.