LIGO’s historic breakthrough continues: After a period of hiatus, LIGO recently returned to service following a significant upgrade. The upgraded version is about 40% more sensitive than its predecessor, allowing it to detect fainter and more distant gravitational waves. The latest observation began on April 1, 2023 and is expected to last about two years. During this period, LIGO will actively search for gravitational waves produced by phenomena such as black hole mergers, neutron star collisions and supernovae.
“Our LIGO teams have been overcoming the odds over the past two years to get ready for this moment, and we are truly ready: our engineering operations until the official start tomorrow on the 4th revealed some candidate events that we have shared with the astronomical community,” said Caltech’s Albert Lazzarini, deputy director of the LIGO Laboratory.
Source: Caltech/Caltech/MIT/LIGO Laboratories
The collaboration between LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA is crucial to unraveling the mysteries of gravitational waves. These detectors work together to decipher subtle disturbances in spacetime caused by massive objects. To enhance the instrument’s sensitivity, additional vacuum tubes with mirrors were fabricated as part of the upgrade process. These vacuum tubes reduce noise and minimize mirror splash, allowing for more accurate measurements.
“Over the past few months, we have identified various noise sources and have made good progress on sensitivity, but have not yet achieved our design goals.“, Virgo spokesperson Gianluca Gemme, stated recently. “We believe that achieving the best detector sensitivity is the best way to maximize its discovery potential.
While Virgo encountered delays in restarting due to technical issues, KAGRA resumed operations on May 24. KAGRA will participate in LIGO’s ongoing testing before launching operations. added next month. Looking ahead, LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA is expected to be joined by LIGO-India later this decade, with some parts of LIGO-India built using spare parts from the original LIGO project. This collaborative effort demonstrates the continued advances in gravitational wave research and the promising future discoveries it holds.
What is LIGO?
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is a prominent scientific experiment and observatory based in Hanford, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana. Its main goal is to detect gravitational waves, which are ripples in spacetime caused by the motion of massive objects. LIGO has played an important role in the field of astronomy since its inception.
LIGO was proposed in 1984 by Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Ronald Drever. Construction of the observatories began in 1994, with the first observatory completed in 2002 at Hanford and the second observatory completed in 2005 at Livingston. These observatories use laser interferometry, using mirrors placed four kilometers apart to detect even the smallest changes in distance.
Source: Caltech/Caltech/MIT/LIGO Laboratories
On September 14, 2015, LIGO achieved a major breakthrough when it directly detected gravitational waves for the first time. This historic discovery, known as GW150914, was caused by the merger of two black holes located 1.3 billion light years apart. Since then, LIGO has continued to make groundbreaking discoveries, including detecting neutron star mergers and collisions between black holes of different masses.
The impact of LIGO’s gravitational wave detection on astronomy is profound. It has allowed scientists to observe and study some of the most powerful events in the universe, such as the mergers of black holes and neutron stars. Furthermore, LIGO has paved the way for other gravitational wave observatories such as Virginia in Italy, GEO600 in Germany, and KAGRA in Japan, helping to enhance our overall ability to detect gravitational waves from many other sources. together.
Categories: Optical Illusion
Source: pagasa.edu.vn