What is LIGO laboratory? It is the world’s largest gravitational wave observatory and a marvel of precision engineering. Comprising two enormous laser interferometers located 3000 kilometers apart, LIGO exploits the physical properties of light and of space itself to detect and...
Can you visit LIGO Livingston? LIGO in Livingston Louisiana offers tours to community and special interest groups. Unfortunately due to demand, most mornings during the academic year are booked with school children. However we can sometimes accomodate tours at different times....
What is LIGO Virgo Kagra? The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration The Virgo detector is a 3 km interferometer in Cascina, Italy. It is operated by the European Gravitational Observatory and funded by INFN (Italy), CNRS (France) and Nikhef (Netherlands). The KAGRA observatory...
What is LIGO doing now? The gravitational wave detector will be able to spot neutron star mergers as distant as 620 million light-years away. Following two years of upgrades, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is almost ready for its next...
Where is Einstein’s telescope? Scientists go underground with Einstein. If it’s up to a consortium of Belgian, German and Dutch universities and research institutions, the coming years will be marked by intensive construction of the Einstein Telescope in Dutch Limburg, 200–300...
Has a gravity wave been detected? Gravitational waves have been detected on earth for the first time, researchers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in the US and the VIRGO detector in Italy have announced. What did LIGO detect? To...
Where is Virgo gravity wave detector located? Virgo. Located outside of Pisa, Italy, Virgo is gravitational wave interferometer with arms 3 km long (LIGO’s are 4 km long). Virgo is funded by the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO), a collaboration of the...
How does LIGO detect gravitational wave? LIGO currently consists of two interferometers, each with two 4 km (2.5 mile) long arms arranged in the shape of an “L”. These instruments act as ‘antennae’ to detect gravitational waves. What is the LIGO...
Why do we want to put a gravitational wave detector in space? Gravitational waves are caused by energetic events in the universe and, unlike any other radiation, can pass unhindered by intervening mass. Launching LISA will add a new sense to...
Where are gravitational waves detected? It turns out that the Universe is filled with incredibly massive objects that undergo rapid accelerations that by their nature, generate gravitational waves that we can actually detect. Examples of such things are orbiting pairs of...