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Another Gravitational Wave detection

Another gravitational wave detection by LIGO has been announced!

See https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20160615

The June 15 announcement page points out that while the signal was weaker than the first detection due to the black hole masses being smaller (14 and 8 solar masses vs 36 and 29):

…when these lighter black holes merged, their signal shifted into higher frequencies bringing it into LIGO’s sensitive band earlier in the merger than we observed in the September event. This allowed us to observe more orbits than the first detection–some 27 orbits over about one second (this compares with just two tenths of a second of observation in the first detection). Combined, these two factors (smaller masses and more observed orbits) were the keys to enabling LIGO to detect a weaker signal. They also allowed us to make more precise comparisons with General Relativity. Spoiler: the signal agrees, again, perfectly with Einstein’s theory.

The news release continues:

Our next observing interval – Observing Run #2, or “O2” – will start in the Fall of 2016. With improved sensitivity, we expect to see more black hole coalescences, and possibly detect gravitational waves from other sources, like binary neutron-star mergers. We are also looking forward to the Virgo detector joining us later in the O2 run. Virgo will be enormously helpful in locating sources on the sky, collapsing that ring down to a patch, but also helping us understand the sources of gravitational waves.

Gravitational Wave astronomy does seem to have arrived!

 

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