Who won the Nobel Prize for discovery of gravitational waves? Weiss, of MIT, and Caltech’s Thorne and Barish played an instrumental role in bringing to fruition one of the most ambitious (and expensive) experiments of the last couple of decades: The...
How does LISA detect gravitational waves? The LISA mission’s primary objective is to detect and measure gravitational waves produced by compact binary systems and mergers of supermassive black holes. LISA will observe gravitational waves by measuring differential changes in the length...
Where is the LIGO observatory? The two primary research centers are located at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The detector sites in Hanford and Livingston are home...
Who created LIGO? The design and construction of LIGO was carried out by a team of scientists, engineers, and staff at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and collaborators from over 80 scientific institutions...
How does LIGO detect gravitational waves? 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...
What is the LIGO Scientific Collaboration working on? The LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) is a group of scientists focused on the direct detection of gravitational waves, using them to explore the fundamental physics of gravity, and developing the emerging field of...
Can you feel a gravitational wave? Gravitational waves spread out from any violent event involving matter – such as, say, the collision of two black holes. Like gravity, however, they’re incredibly weak, so you’d have to be extremely close to their...
What is an example of a gravitational wave? Some examples of events that could cause a gravitational wave are: when a star explodes asymmetrically (called a supernova) when two big stars orbit each other. when two black holes orbit each other...
How are gravitational waves generated? Continuous gravitational waves are thought to be produced by a single spinning massive object like a neutron star. Any bumps on or imperfections in the spherical shape of this star will generate gravitational waves as it...
What is cosmic gravitational waves? Gravitational waves are ‘ripples’ in space-time caused by some of the most violent and energetic processes in the Universe. Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916 in his general theory of relativity. Are...