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Advanced Ligo’s hunt for gravitational waves could revolutionize astronomy
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Not far from where the first nuclear bomb was developed, researchers in Washington State are set to dedicate new facilities that could change astronomy by searching for gravitational waves.
The Advanced Ligo facilities are said to become the site of one of the greatest astrophysics research projects of our generation. Shown to exist by the Theory of General Relativity, gravitational waves are ripples in space-time cause by the most massive cosmic events, like the merging of two black holes.
If the Advanced Ligo is able to pick up these waves, it will revolutionize the way we are able to see the universe, according to France Córdova, the director of the US National Science Foundation.
“Advanced Ligo represents a critically important step forward in our continuing effort to understand the extraordinary mysteries of our Universe,” Córdova told BBC News. “It gives scientists a highly sophisticated instrument for detecting gravitational waves, which we believe carry with them information about their dynamic origins and about the nature of gravity that cannot be obtained by conventional astronomical tools.”
A more sensitive gravitational wave detector
The project will run out of two similar sites: one at Louisiana State University and one in the Columbia River Basin region of southeastern Washington. Both facilities will split a high-powered laser and send individual light paths down two long vacuum tunnels set up in an L-shaped arrangement. The split laser beams will then be bounced back to their starting point, where the beam is reformed at sensors.
The facilities will be able to detect gravitational waves if the laser sensors pick up slight disturbance from the light beams. A previous iteration of LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) could pick up a disturbance one one-thousandth of the width of a proton. With the new upgrades, the project will be ten times more sensitive.
“We have a standard measure to track the improving performance of the detectors as they are commissioned, and in round numbers both detectors are now operating with a range close to 200 million light-years,” said Ken Strain, principal investigator of the Advanced Ligo project team in the UK. “So, a truly phenomenal distance, and within that volume there are very many galaxies, and if an event takes place in one of those galaxies when the detectors are online – which they will be increasingly towards the end of the year – it should be seen.”
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Source: http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1113394410/advanced-ligo-to-hunt-for-gravitational-waves-052015/
