I came across this article and thought I'd pass it along. Detecting gravitational waves is a huge advance in observing the universe and it's fun to watch the field evolve. I look forward to the advancements and subsequent discoveries that will come in the next few years. Here is the article:
A New Gravitational Wave Detector Makes Its First Discovery
Arguably the most exciting recent development in astronomy was 2016's announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves, waves that literally ripple the shape of space itself, created by violent events like black holes colliding. But every gravitational wave discovery had always been done with only two detectors, meaning that scientists only knew what caused the waves—but couldn’t really figure out where in the sky they came from.
As you may have read, another gravitational wave detector called Virgo joined the two operational LIGO experiments to better measure the waves. Today, scientists from both collaborations are announcing the first gravitational wave event to include both LIGO and Virgo observations at a press conference (watch it live here) in Turin, Italy. It’s not a confirmation of the “new kind of gravitational wave” rumors you might have seen, but it’s definitely an important milestone in gravitational wave astronomy.
“We were so happy, I have to tell you. We celebrated,” Louisiana State University physicist (and former LIGO Scientific Collaboration spokesperson) Gabriela González told Gizmodo. “Virgo joined this run on August first... but we didn’t think we’d see anything over that period of time.” Then, on August 14th, the waves came in.
Virgo’s addition is a big deal, mainly so scientists can point their telescopes to the source of the gravitational waves as soon as they hit. “The main advantage of knowing the direction is that you can take a telescope in that direction and see if anything else is coming from the source,” said Imre Bartos, assistant professor at the University of Florda. Some potential gravitational wave-producing sources like colliding neutron stars might come with a light wave counterpart observable by telescopes.
The newest gravitational waves came from two black holes, one 31 times the mass of the sun and the other 25 times the mass of the sun, colliding to form a black hole 53 times the mass of the sun according to a LIGO press release. That means an amount of mass three times that of our sun turned into energy powering the waves.
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A New Gravitational Wave Detector Makes Its First Discovery
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