US Restarts Hunt For Gravitational Waves With Advanced LIGO

schwit1 writes: The hunt for gravitational waves began again for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)-the largest instrument of its kind. The restart follows a five-year-long, US $200-million project to overhaul the experiment's detectors. Many physicists believe the revamped experiment, dubbed Advanced LIGO, will be the first to find direct evidence of gravitational waves: ripples in the fabric of space-time that can be created by, among other things, a pair of neutron stars or black holes orbiting each other. Gravitational waves were first theorized in 1916 by Albert Einstein as a consequence of his general theory of relativity, which celebrates its centennial this year.

Comments

An honest question

[crbowman]

I'm not trolling here. These are honest questions: I assume, since we're spending more money on a more advanced instrument, that we didn't find anything the first time around? Was that because the instrument likely wasn't sensitive enough or because they likely don't exist? If we didn't find them first time around, does that call into question some aspect of GR? I know GR is a theory that has been well proven, but if we don't find them this time around does that have significant implications?

Re:An honest question

[Anonymous Coward]

Just speculating here, but that is likely why there are two detector stations; one on either side of the country. An event showing up at both detectors nearly simultaneously would likely be external waves. Events showing up at only one detector could be written off as local noise.