This morning, the LIGO Scientific Consortium has announced that it has made the first detection of gravitational waves. The signal was detected within 7 ms by both LIGO detectors in the US on September 14, 2015, and has been shown to be consistent with the merger of a pair of 30 solar mass black holes. The discovery was made possible by the enhanced capabilities of Advanced LIGO, a major upgrade that increases the sensitivity of the instruments compared to the first generation LIGO detectors. Amazingly, the detection was made prior to the first official observing run, instead being seen in an "engineering run" in which the instruments were otherwise operating optimally. This incredible achievement has kicked off an entirely new way of gathering information about the universe around us, and makes electromagnetic followup projects like our own Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) possible

Labels: 2016, gravitational waves