26 Mar 2019 — LIGO is set to resume its hunt for gravitational waves—ripples in space and time—on April 1, after receiving a series of upgrades to its lasers, mirrors, and other components. LIGO now has a combined increase in sensitivity of about 40 percent over its last run, which means that it can survey an even larger volume of space for gravitational-wave events like black hole collisions.
Joining the search will be Virgo, the European-based gravitational-wave detector, located at the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO) in Italy, which has almost doubled its sensitivity since its last run and is also starting up April 1.
For more information, read the full press release.
LIGO team members install in-vacuum equipment that is part of the squeezed-light upgrade. [Image credit: LIGO/Caltech/MIT/Matt Heintze