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Gravitational Wave Detectors Upgraded To Hunt For 'Extreme Cosmic Events' (cnet.com)
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) facilities, residing in Washington and Louisiana, will be upgraded via grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation, UK Research and Innovation and the Australian Research Council -- providing stronger, more frequent detections and decreasing noise. CNET reports: Over $34 million will be provided for the upgrade which makes LIGO sound like the latest iPhone. When it is complete, LIGO will go from its crusty old 2015 "Advanced LIGO" phase to the "Advanced LIGO Plus" phase. LIGO's twin facilities both contain two 4-kilometer long arms that use lasers to detect minute disturbances caused by extremely energetic cosmic events -- like black holes merging. The incredibly high-powered events are responsible for gravitational waves, rippling out through spacetime the same way water does when you drop a rock in a pond. By the time they reach Earth, the ripples are so small that only incredibly tiny disturbances in LIGO's lasers can detect them.
The proposed upgrades will greatly increase the number of events that LIGO will detect. With only 11 under its belt so far, [David Reitze, executive director of LIGO] even expects we might see "black hole mergers on a daily basis" and describes neutron star mergers becoming "much more frequent." All that extra power adds up, hopefully revealing some of the cosmos' deepest, darkest secrets. In September 2015, LIGO provided the first evidence for a black hole merger -- and in turn, the existence of gravitational waves -- just four days after a three-year long upgrade. Since then, LIGO has seen 10 black hole mergers and a single, huge collision between two incredibly dense stars, known as neutron stars.
The proposed upgrades will greatly increase the number of events that LIGO will detect. With only 11 under its belt so far, [David Reitze, executive director of LIGO] even expects we might see "black hole mergers on a daily basis" and describes neutron star mergers becoming "much more frequent." All that extra power adds up, hopefully revealing some of the cosmos' deepest, darkest secrets. In September 2015, LIGO provided the first evidence for a black hole merger -- and in turn, the existence of gravitational waves -- just four days after a three-year long upgrade. Since then, LIGO has seen 10 black hole mergers and a single, huge collision between two incredibly dense stars, known as neutron stars.
I am also interested in these "extreme cosmic events", but would like to know if there's going to be a cash bar and/or bottle service and any dress code. Last time I went to one of those things I got wasted on K and had the dry mouth and all they had was weird fruit juices and herbal teas.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I find it fascinating that we can view objects exploding and combining billions of miles away because stuff on planet earth changes position.
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Without music, life would be a mistake. - Friedrich Nietzsche
It is great that LIGO will be upgraded and able to detect more events, but that is all that the article says. Can anyone provide a link to a slightly more technical article which explains how it will be upgraded and why these upgrades will make it more sensitive?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
https://www.nature.com/article...
The major technology currently being tuned at advanced LIGO (aLIGO) is "squeezed light" - manipulation of the quantum state of the light, so as to decrease phase uncertainty. Due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, this comes at the cost of increased amplitude uncertainty. The phase uncertainty is an important source of noise at high frequencies (which are more interesting), but the amplitude uncertainty manifests as low frequency noise (due to pressure on the mirrors), so this is a reasonable tradeoff.
The next step being developed for future upgrades(termed aLIGO+), is frequency dependent squeezing - the quadrature of the squeezing (i.e. it's direction in the amplitude/phase plane) can be made to rotate over time. This has the extraordinary effect of squeezing so as to reduce amplitude uncertainty at low frequencies, while reducing phase uncertainty at high frequencies (i.e. improving noise at all frequencies)
http://www.apc.univ-paris7.fr/...