A new study found that the Milky Way's spin leaves a hidden fingerprint in the hum of gravitational waves from binary stars, which could lead to misjudging the hum's properties if ignored by a future space mission.

How this affects you

Ignoring the Milky Way's spin in analyzing gravitational wave data could skew estimates of binary star numbers and masses, potentially leading to inaccurate understanding of the galaxy's composition. However, accounting for this effect could also provide a new method to measure the Milky Way's rotation and study dark matter.