{"id":18109,"date":"2019-03-27T01:05:29","date_gmt":"2019-03-26T17:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/ligo-and-virgo-detectors-get-in-sync-for-gravitational-wave-hunt-thatll-last-a-year\/"},"modified":"2019-03-27T01:05:29","modified_gmt":"2019-03-26T17:05:29","slug":"ligo-and-virgo-detectors-get-in-sync-for-gravitational-wave-hunt-thatll-last-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/ligo-and-virgo-detectors-get-in-sync-for-gravitational-wave-hunt-thatll-last-a-year\/","title":{"rendered":"LIGO and Virgo detectors get in sync for gravitational-wave hunt that\u2019ll last a year"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"LIGO
Detector engineers Hugh Radkins (foreground) and Betsy Weaver (background) take up positions inside the vacuum system of the detector at LIGO Hanford Observatory to perform the hardware upgrades required for Advanced LIGO\u2019s third observing run. (LIGO \/ Caltech \/ MIT Photo \/ Jeff Kissel)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Physicists won\u2019t be fooling around on April 1 at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in Washington state and Louisiana, or at the Virgo gravitational-wave detector in Italy.<\/p>\n

Instead, they\u2019ll all be bearing down for the most serious search ever conducted for signs of merging black holes, colliding neutron stars \u2014 and perhaps the first detection of a mashup involving both those exotic phenomena.<\/p>\n

Both experiments have been upgraded significantly since their last observational runs, resulting in a combined increase of about 40 percent in sensitivity. That means even more cosmic smashups should be detected, at distances farther out. There\u2019s also a better chance of determining precisely where cosmic collisions occur, increasing the chances of following up with other types of observations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith our three detectors now operational at a significantly improved sensitivity, the global LIGO-Virgo detector network will allow more precise triangulation of the sources of gravitational waves,\u201d Jo van den Brand, a Dutch astronomer who serves as the spokesperson for Europe\u2019s Virgo Collaboration, said today in a news release. \u201cThis will be an important step toward our quest for multi-messenger astronomy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Multi-messenger astronomy involves looking at the same source with a wide variety of instruments, focusing on different electromagnetic wavelengths plus whole new ways of looking at the universe. That\u2019s how the first observation of a neutron star merger was made in 2017.<\/p>\n

LIGO\u2019s detections of black holes have already won a Nobel Prize in physics for three of the project\u2019s leaders, and who knows? There could well be future Nobel-worthy discoveries waiting to be made during the yearlong run that\u2019s due to begin April 1. For example, physicists haven\u2019t yet detected the gravitational-wave signature that should accompany the collision of a black hole and a neutron star.<\/p>\n