The recent discovery by the LIGO made me wonder about this.
We know that there exists a CMBR, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, a blanket of electromagnetic energy covering the universe, made by the Big Bang.
But, the big bang was an explosive event. The huge "shockwave" made by it sent ripples in space time. (Primordial gravitational waves)
Wouldn't these ripples flood the universe creating sort of a Cosmic Gravitational Background Radiation (not exactly radiation)?
If such waves do flood the universe, couldn't a much more sensetive version of LIGO be able to detect this and use it as a contrast to create "gravitational telescopes"?
Answer
Yes, there is a predicted cosmic gravitational wave background; an expanding universe is essentially transparent to gravitational waves once they are produced.
There are a number of scenarios in which GWs might be produced - these are listed in the eLISA white paper and include a transition from the inflationary epoch to the hot big bang; but for realistically detectable strain values, an interferometer needs to be sensitive to milli-Hz or lower.
This means that the gravitational waves have extremely long wavelengths and milli-Hz frequencies are masked by seismic activity on Earth. Thus one needs an interferometer with very long arms in space.
Detecting the cosmic gravitational wave background is one of the things the space-based eLISA interferometer may be able to do with its proposed 1 million km arms.
See http://www.ligo.org/science/GW-Stochastic.php
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