{"id":19465,"date":"2016-02-11T23:39:21","date_gmt":"2016-02-11T15:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/gravitational-waves-found-ligo-experiment-watches-two-black-holes-smash-together\/"},"modified":"2016-02-11T23:39:21","modified_gmt":"2016-02-11T15:39:21","slug":"gravitational-waves-found-ligo-experiment-watches-two-black-holes-smash-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/gravitational-waves-found-ligo-experiment-watches-two-black-holes-smash-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Gravitational waves found! LIGO experiment watches two black holes smash together"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_229358\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-229358\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-229358 size-full-width\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/160211-merger-1-630x507.jpg\" alt=\"Black hole merger\" width=\"630\" height=\"507\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/160211-merger-1-630x507.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/160211-merger-1-768x618.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/160211-merger-1-1240x998.jpg 1240w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-229358\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A computer simulation shows two black holes shortly before they merge into one. (Credit: SXS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>WASHINGTON, D.C.<\/strong>&nbsp;\u2013 After more than a decade of looking, scientists say they\u2019ve detected the gravitational waves given off when two black holes merged into one bigger black hole.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLadies and gentlemen, we have detected gravitational waves. We did it!\u201d Caltech physicist David Reitze, executive director of&nbsp;the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, declared here today&nbsp;at the National Press Club.<\/p>\n<p>Reitze compared the LIGO project&nbsp;to a \u201cscientific moonshot,\u201d and then added, \u201cWe landed on the moon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The news was greeted with applause at the Washington briefing \u2013&nbsp;and at a gathering of scientists and journalists in Hanford, Wash., the home of&nbsp;one of LIGO\u2019s miles-long, L-shaped&nbsp;detectors.<\/p>\n<p>The detection represents what\u2019s likely to be a Nobel Prize-worthy discovery. It&nbsp;provides the best confirmation yet for a claim made a century ago in Albert Einstein\u2019s general theory of relativity: that gravitational interactions should give off energy in the form of ripples in the fabric of spacetime.<\/p>\n<p>For more than a decade, LIGO\u2019s detectors in Hanford and in Livingston, La., have been watching for the signature of those ripples, using sets of cross-interfering laser beams. The laser detectors are so finely tuned they can register&nbsp;distortions in spatial dimensions that amount to less than a thousandth of the width of a proton.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"LIGO Detects Gravitational Waves\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/B4XzLDM3Py8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Last year, scientists&nbsp;made changes in the LIGO equipment to&nbsp;improve its sensitivity dramatically. The&nbsp;\u201cAdvanced LIGO\u201d observational campaign began last September, and it didn\u2019t take long for the physics community to start buzzing about&nbsp;rumors that the upgraded experiment was&nbsp;picking up gravitational waves.&nbsp;Today, LIGO spokesperson Gabriela Gonzalez could joke about all those months of buzzing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe facts are so beautiful, how can you talk about rumors now?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>The detection was made on Sept. 14, just a few days before the campaign\u2019s official start. \u201cWe actually had not declared that we were ready to take data,\u201d Caltech physicist Stan Whitcomb, the LIGO project\u2019s chief scientist, told GeekWire.<\/p>\n<p>Caltech theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, who was one of LIGO\u2019s early advocates, said the signal was \u201cjust barely not strong enough\u201d to have been detected years ago during the initial LIGO campaign. But with Advanced LIGO&nbsp;on the case,&nbsp;the signal stuck out like a sore thumb.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy reaction was, \u2018Wow, I couldn\u2019t believe it,&#8217;\u201d Reitze said.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3xVUmmSFxXU<\/p>\n<p>False signals are sometimes inserted into the LIGO data to test the science team\u2019s verification process, but in this case the signal came in before that \u201cblind insertion\u201d system was in effect. After weeks of analysis, scientists&nbsp;at LIGO and other gravitational-wave research&nbsp;centers&nbsp;verified the gravitational-wave signal so definitively that only the lower bound of the statistical confidence level could be estimated. (For the stat geeks out there, that value is 5.1 sigma.)<\/p>\n<p>Scientists say the gravitational waves came from the merger of two black holes about 1.3 billion light-years from Earth, lying somewhere in the southern celestial hemisphere. The black holes were about 29 and 36 times the mass of the sun. In the course of merging, a share of the mass amounting to about three times the mass of the sun was converted into gravitational-wave energy, in accordance with Einstein\u2019s theory.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the first time that this phenomenon has ever been seen,\u201d Reitze said.<\/p>\n<p>The research is being published&nbsp;in Physical Review Letters.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"LIGO: Journey of a G-Wave\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FXlg3cr-q44?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The detection&nbsp;is&nbsp;a big deal, and not only because it confirms one of Einstein\u2019s big&nbsp;claims.<\/p>\n<p>Gravitational-wave observatories will provide a whole new way to \u201csee\u201d the universe \u2013 to study invisible black holes, to probe the dynamics of a supernova in the midst of an explosion, and to get a better grip on how gravity works.<\/p>\n<p>Kip Thorne, who designed the fictional black hole in the movie \u201cInterstellar,\u201d said a detailed analysis of LIGO\u2019s data could help physicists narrow down their search for the graviton, an as-yet-unobserved particle that\u2019s thought to play a role in mediating the force of gravity.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists expect still more gravitational-wave observatories, such as Italy\u2019s upgraded EGO-Virgo detector and Japan\u2019s KAGRA detector, to bring further discoveries to light. And last year, the European Space Agency launched a mission called LISA Pathfinder that could eventually set the stage for a space-based gravitational-wave observatory.<\/p>\n<p>Thorne wrapped up today\u2019s briefing by providing&nbsp;a big-picture perspective on LIGO\u2019s quest. Just as modern-day historians hail the Renaissance for its impact on art, architecture and music, future historians are likely to hail the current age for its contribution to humanity\u2019s understanding of the universe, he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLIGO is a big part of that,\u201d Thorne&nbsp;said. \u201cI think we should be proud of what we give to our descendants culturally.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>More than 1,000 researchers from the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration are listed as co-authors of the paper in Physical Review Letters, titled \u201cObservation of Gravitational Waves From a Binary Black Hole Merger.\u201d The&nbsp;first listed&nbsp;author is B.P. Abbott, by virtue of alphabetical order.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>This report includes information from GeekWire contributor John Stang.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A computer simulation shows two black holes shortly before they merge into one. (Credit: SXS) WASHINGTON, D.C.&nbsp;\u2013 After more than a decade of looking, scientists say they\u2019ve detected the gravitational waves given off when two black holes merged into one bigger black hole. \u201cLadies and gentlemen, we have detected gravitational waves. We did it!\u201d Caltech [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4568,5192,4570,21,5193],"class_list":["post-19465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-advanced-ligo","tag-einstein","tag-physics","tag-space","tag-theory-of-general-relativity"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19465"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}