gravitational waves

The precise instruments at the LIGO and Virgo facilities were responsible for past detections of gravitational waves, but now astronomers plan to look for ripples from supermassive black hole collisions using natural detectors in space: pulsars, the “cosmic lighthouses” of the sky.

Gravitational waves are one of the biggest scientific discoveries in recent years, but pinpointing their sources isn't easy. To help with this, NASA is turning to a surprising source – lobsters, whose eyes are being used as a model for new space-based instrument.

A team of scientists has announced the fifth detection of gravitational waves, but there’s a groundbreaking difference this time: the ripples were caused by the collision of two neutron stars, meaning the event was accompanied by light, radio, and other electromagnetic signals for the first time.

The 2015 detection of gravitational waves is one of the most important scientific discoveries in a century. It’s no surprise then that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics to scientists at the LIGO/Virgo Collaboration, for that groundbreaking discovery.

Another day, another detection of gravitational waves. LIGO has just detected gravitational waves for the fourth time, but it wasn’t alone this time: the signals were also measured by the Virgo detector in Italy, marking a new milestone in the observation of the Universe.

The LISA Pathfinder satellite was shut down this week, after 16 months of service hunting for gravitational waves. But this is only the beginning: the satellite was a testbed for technology that will eventually be used in the main LISA mission, the largest gravitational wave observatory ever built.

​In 2015, LIGO detected gravitational waves for the first time, by observing tiny wobbles in laser beams, but a newly launched telescope in Spain is aiming to see them more directly, scouring the skies for the optical signals associated with gravitational waves.

Before 2016 gets rolled over by the tide of time, join us as we toast the most mind-boggling, world-changing, amazing advancements scientists made around the globe this year.

ESA is soliciting proposals from scientists for its eLISA L3 space mission slated to launch in 2034, which calls for a multi-satellite mission linked over millions of kilometers to detect gravity waves.

​​An international team of astronomers is planning to use gravitational wave data to unravel the formation processes that created the first supermassive black holes.

Scientists making use of the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) instruments have announced the second confirmed detection of gravitational waves resulting from the collision of two black holes.

​The mark of a fine scientific instrument isn't usually how well it can fall, but for the LISA Pathfinder spacecraft, that metric could help decode the very fabric of the universe. Fortunately after just two months of testing, the tech aboard LISA has done exceptionally well in free falling.