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LIGO and Virgo Join Forces In Search for Gravitational Waves(Forwarded)



 
 
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  #1  
Old February 17th 07, 08:08 PM posted to sci.astro
Andrew Yee
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Default LIGO and Virgo Join Forces In Search for Gravitational Waves(Forwarded)

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Contacts:
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Tel 39.050.752340 Fax 39.050.752550

February 13, 2007

LIGO and Virgo Join Forces In Search for Gravitational Waves

PASADENA, Calif. and CASCINA, Italy -- The Laser Interferometer
Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Virgo interferometric
gravitational-wave detector of the European Gravitational Observatory
(EGO) near Pisa, Italy, have agreed to join in a collaborative search for
gravitational waves from sources in and far beyond our galaxy. The
collaboration will link the three LIGO detectors, which are in the United
States, and LIGO's partner, GEO600 in Germany, with the Virgo detector to
increase the likelihood of detecting the elusive phenomenon first
predicted over 90 years ago by Albert Einstein in his general theory of
relativity, and pinpointing the source of the signals.

LIGO is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Virgo is funded
jointly by the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) and
the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) through the
EGO Consortium, and GEO600 is funded jointly by the Max Planck Society in
Germany and the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council in the
United Kingdom. Peter Saulson of Syracuse University, spokesperson for the
LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and Benoit Mours of the Laboratoire
d'Annecy-le-Vieux de Physique des Particules, spokesperson for the Virgo
Collaboration, guided the discussions that brought about this agreement.
The LIGO and Virgo collaborations have collaborated in the past on more
limited technical investigations, but this agreement is the first to
involve full data sharing.

"This is a landmark agreement," Saulson says. "The members of both
collaborations have overwhelmingly embraced this effort, recognizing that
in spite of the hard work that it will take, the best science will come
from collaboration."

LIGO, in the midst of a nearly two-year run functioning at its design
sensitivity, is operating along with GEO600, while Virgo is making rapid
progress toward its sensitivity goals. The agreement calls for data
sharing to begin when the sensitivity and duty cycle of the
interferometers allow a significant contribution to joint searches for
gravitational waves. In the meantime, the two collaborations have begun to
merge some of their data-analysis activities in anticipation.

Mours described the importance of this agreement. "Combining the data from
the collaborations is a classic example of 'the whole being more than the
sum of the parts.' The combined data will give us a much better chance of
finding the first gravitational waves, and will allow us to have greater
confidence in any detections. And, if we find something, the combined data
will provide more information about the location of the source than either
project alone could."

LIGO operates laboratories in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford,
Washington. The project was designed and is operated by the California
Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Research is carried out by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC), a
group of 500 scientists at universities around the United States and in
eight foreign countries.

The LSC includes the members of GEO600, the German-British project that
operates an interferometer near Hannover, Germany. Data from the GEO600
interferometer have been used in a number of observations by the LSC, and
are expected to continue to play an important role in the global network
once Virgo joins. Bernard Schutz, representing GEO, welcomes Virgo's
participation. "With this agreement we are pioneering a closer level of
scientific cooperation between the USA and Europe. By completely pooling
our data and coordinating our operations we greatly improve the
sensitivity of all our detectors and agree to share equally in the
scientific results of our hard work. Science is the big winner from this
agreement."

The Virgo Collaboration comprises 180 scientists from 13 institutions in
France, Italy, and the Netherlands.

This agreement lays the groundwork for future expansion of worldwide
collaboration. It explicitly states that new detectors are welcome to join
the international network of gravitational-wave detectors as the new
detectors become operational at a sensitivity that would benefit the
collective scientific capabilities of the network.

The LIGO, GEO600 and Virgo detectors are very similar in concept, though
many aspects of the apparatus have different detailed implementation. All
projects have L-shaped facilities with multi-kilometer-long arms (4
kilometers for LIGO, 3 kilometers for Virgo, 600 meters for GEO600) with
evacuated tubes that contain laser beams monitoring the positions of
precision mirrors using interferometry. According to Einstein's theory,
the relative distance of the mirrors along the two arms changes very
slightly when a gravitational wave passes by. The interferometers are set
up in such a way that a change in the lengths of the arms as small as one
part in ten to the 18th meters (a thousandth the diameter of an atomic
nucleus) can be detected.

The next major milestone for LIGO, Advanced LIGO, funded by the National
Science Foundation with British and German partners, is expected to start
construction in 2008. Advanced LIGO, which will utilize the infrastructure
of LIGO, will be 10 times more sensitive than the current LIGO detectors.
Virgo scientists are also planning for a comparable upgrade of their
detector (Advanced Virgo), which will be made about the same time.

Additional information about the detectors can be found at
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu
http://geo600.aei.mpg.de
http://www.virgo.infn.it


  #2  
Old February 18th 07, 05:16 PM posted to sci.astro
Ian Parker
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Posts: 2,554
Default LIGO and Virgo Join Forces In Search for Gravitational Waves (Forwarded)

This is probably the best that that can be done on Earth. It should be
remembered that Gravitons have a spin of 2 and are quadrupolar. Let us
look at the wavelengths we are likely to expect. The Sun has a
Schwatzchild radius of 27km. If you think of a supernova explosion,
black holes of stellar mass and things orbiting the same you get
wavelengths upwards of 2Pi*27km. Don't forget it is stars much more
massive than the Sun that explode.

One basline is 600m. This is a black hole the mass of a large Jupiter.
What phenomena could be detected?

If anything is detected it will be from a totally unknown type of
source.


- Ian Parker

  #3  
Old February 18th 07, 06:19 PM posted to sci.astro
Androcles
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Posts: 260
Default LIGO and Virgo Join Forces In Search for Gravitational Waves (Forwarded)


"Ian Parker" wrote in message oups.com...
This is probably the best that that can be done on Earth. It should be
remembered that Gravitons have a spin of 2 and are quadrupolar


It should be remembered that you make it up as you go along, ****wit.

 




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