Three stars orbiting in a perfect triangle can mimic the gravitational waves of a two-star collision, potentially fooling our detectors.
April 1, 2026
Original Paper
Waveform degeneracy of binary systems and Lagrange three-body systems
arXiv · 2603.29991
The Takeaway
We identify cosmic collisions by the specific ripples they send through spacetime, assuming they come from two objects. This discovery shows that a stable three-body system can produce an identical signal, meaning many of our 'binary' discoveries might actually be secret triples hiding in plain sight.
From the abstract
A particular solution to the three-body problem is the circular Lagrange three-body system, where the masses move in circular orbits such that they always constitute an equilateral triangle. Such a system has been found to emit gravitational waves with a waveform similar to that of a binary system. In this work, we study the gravitational waveform degeneracy between quasi-circular binary systems and Lagrange three-body systems up to 0.5PN order. Assuming we know the parameters of a given binary