The elusive effort to detect gravitational waves.
After spending more than half a billion dollars and eight years of looking without a single detection, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) has gotten a major upgrade.
If commissioning continues to go relatively smoothly, plans call for the first Advanced LIGO observing run to start in late 2015. A second run, with a decent shot of finding a gravitational wave, would occur in the winter of 2016–17. (Weiss likes to point out that a 2016 discovery would be a nice 100th-anniversary commemoration of Einstein’s paper describing gravitational waves.) By the third science run, planned for 2017–18, the machine should be getting sensitive enough to almost certainly nail a detection, says Reitze.
It is hoped that the increased sensitivity, ten times better than before. will allow LIGO to finally make the first detection of a gravitational wave.
After spending more than half a billion dollars and eight years of looking without a single detection, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) has gotten a major upgrade.
If commissioning continues to go relatively smoothly, plans call for the first Advanced LIGO observing run to start in late 2015. A second run, with a decent shot of finding a gravitational wave, would occur in the winter of 2016–17. (Weiss likes to point out that a 2016 discovery would be a nice 100th-anniversary commemoration of Einstein’s paper describing gravitational waves.) By the third science run, planned for 2017–18, the machine should be getting sensitive enough to almost certainly nail a detection, says Reitze.
It is hoped that the increased sensitivity, ten times better than before. will allow LIGO to finally make the first detection of a gravitational wave.