Gravitational Waves Detected by LIGO

Last month the science community received news that the LIGO project had been successful in detecting gravitational waves almost exactly 100 years since Einstein’s 1916 prediction. This is amazing news and confirms what many scientists have been reporting and studying for a long time.

Although there have been many speed bumps in the long road to success, LIGO was able to quantitatively prove the existence of the gravitational waves.

In an article from 2007, LIGO explains that “Advanced LIGO is an ambitious project to improve LIGO’s sensitivity by a factor of 10 and increase its source reach (the number of extragalactic sources within its range) by a factor of 1000.”

This advanced project is what ultimately led to the discovery of the gravitational waves. This extremely sensitive equipment can detect energy and pulses from many light years away. With this extremely sensitive technology LIGO can continue to do great research and keep the scientific community in awe!

Resources:

http://www.phys.lsu.edu/faculty/gonzalez/S1Calibration/

http://www.wired.com/2016/02/6-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-gravitational-waves/

https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/system/media_files/binaries/310/original/LHO-NewsRelease-11Feb16-Final.pdf?1455201669

https://labcit.ligo.caltech.edu/~ll_news/s5_news/s5article.htm

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-gravitational-waves-ligo-history-20160222-story.html