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Scientists can now capture gravitational waves better than ever.
Although physicists only observed the first of these cosmic “chirps” in 2015, subsequent improvements in detectors have increasingly opened these signals to scientific study. Twins Gravitational wave observatory with laser interferometer (LIGO) in Louisiana and Washington, as well as a European counterpart called Virgo, are currently on another observation break for the coronavirus pandemic and updates underway, but the scientists affiliated with the project spent their time sifting through the data to create a new catalog of dozens of gravitational wave signals detected during the first half of the third joint observation campaign, which has taken place since April in September 2019.
“A key to finding a new gravitational wave signal about once every five days over the span of six months has been the upgrades and improvements of the two LIGO detectors and the Virgo detector,” said Karsten Danzmann, director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Germany, he said in a statement.
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In particular, he pointed to new hardware such as lasers and mirrors, as well as new techniques for reducing background noise. “This increased the volume at which our detectors could pick up the signal from, say, the merger neutron stars by a factor of four! “said Danzmann.
The improved sensitivity allowed scientists to capture more gravitational waves, but also a more diverse range of signals, according to researchers affiliated with the project.
“When you look at the catalog, there is one thing that all events have in common: they come from mergers of compact objects such as black holes or neutron stars. But if you look closer, they are all quite different, “said Frank Ohme, a physicist at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Germany.” We are getting a richer picture of the gravitational wave population. The masses of these objects cover a very wide mass range from about that of our sun to more than 90 times that, some of them closer to the Earth, some very far away. “
A handful of the 39 detections included in the new version have already hit the headlines, including the first observed lopsided black hole merging, the first merger observed to create a file black hole of intermediate mass, and the first merger observed to include a mysterious object that falls within the size range between neutron stars and black holes.
But those aren’t the only intriguing findings in the lot, the researchers pointed out. One of the detections could represent a small black hole and a neutron star, a mixed casting that physicists were waiting to see. “Unfortunately the signal is quite weak so we can’t be entirely sure,” Serguei Ossokine, another physicist at the institute, said in the statement.
Another detection represents the lightest black holes scientists have observed to date, he added, one about six times the mass of the sun and the other half still as large.
And there is even more data to study. The second half of the same observation run began in November 2019 and lasted until the coronavirus pandemic forced detectors to send science personnel home for safety in late March 2020.
Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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