November: “Gravitational Waves” Hangout
20 November 2015 — Watch LSC’s Joey Shapiro Key (Univ of Texas Rio Grande Valley) and Shane Larson (Northwestern) discuss the science and technology behind gravitational waves and the instruments used to observe them. This Google hangout was organized by the American Astronomical Society (event’s announcement page on the AAS website). Watch on Youtube or Google+ to find out how and why we try to detect gravitational waves.

September: LIGO Featured in BBC’s Radio Show
26 September 2015 — LIGO was profiled in the BBC World Services Radio show “A New Ear on the Universe,” on September 26, 2015. Download podcast or visit the The Documentary website.

September: 1st Observing Run of LIGO’s Advanced Detectors begins
18 September 2015 — The first Observing Run of Advanced LIGO, called O1, started on September 18, 2015. During the run, the LIGO detectors in Hanford and Livingston will be simultaneously collecting data. The run is planned to last three months. It will provide LIGO researchers with long-awaited new data to continue their quest to directly detect cosmic gravitational waves. Already three times more sensitive than initial LIGO, the Advanced LIGO detectors will be fine-tuned in the next months to increase the sensitivity 10 times compared with the initial LIGO. This will allow the scientists to detect gravitational waves generated as far away as several hundred millions of light years. Read more about LIGO’s first Observing Run on the LIGO Lab website.

June: LIGO and LSC Release S6 Data
10 June 2015 — The LIGO Laboratory and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) are pleased to announce the public release of strain data taken by the project’s two gravitational wave detectors during LIGO’s sixth science run (S6) that occurred from July 2009 through October 2010. This release follows the release of the LIGO S5 data in August 2014.

LIGO’s S6 observing run was conducted in coordination with the Virgo detector’s Science Runs 2 and 3 (VSR2, VSR3), and with observations by the SWIFT space telescope and numerous ground-based wide-field optical telescopes. Two LIGO detectors, H1 at LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) and L1 at LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO), had been upgraded to “Enhanced LIGO” for S6; the principal upgrades included higher-power lasers, a new readout scheme, and an output mode cleaner mounted on active seismic isolation. The third LIGO detector, H2 at LHO, was retired in 2009 in preparation for its upgrade in the Advanced LIGO program.

The LIGO data release comes with detailed metadata, tutorials, tools and software that will help public users perform effective analyses. The release will promote broad participation in the advancement of gravitational wave physics and astrophysics from professional and amateur scientists, graduate students, undergraduates and secondary students. Participants are invited to help improve the quality of LIGO’s scientific results, including the verification of results already produced by the LSC.

The LSC has analyzed LIGO’s S6 data; no gravitational wave candidate signals were found in the LSC searches. LIGO will release data from the upgraded Advanced LIGO detectors that will begin operating in 2015. LIGO expects that such releases could include gravitational wave signals. Should regular gravitational wave detections begin to occur, public participation in LIGO data analysis will add an exciting dimension to gravitational wave astronomy. Numerical relativists, relativity theorists, astrophysicists and others will use LIGO data to better understand the dynamics of strongly curved spacetime along with the origins and properties of gravitational wave sources.

LIGO anticipates that data analysis in the LSC will improve as a result of this effort to make releases that the broader community can easily understand and use. The international network of gravitational wave observatories continues to move toward a model of shared data analysis; the public release program will facilitate the growth of this global capability.

Please visit the LIGO Open Science Center (LOSC) website for access to data downloads and tutorial materials. This site provides resources that will help participants understand LIGO data and gravitational wave science. LIGO encourages users to register for the LOSC email list. List subscribers will stay informed of updates and future releases, and can send questions and comments to the LOSC development team.

The LIGO Laboratory is operated by Caltech and MIT for the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). The LIGO Open Science Center is supported by NSF awards 1210172 and 0757058.

Read more: LIGO Open Science Center (LOSC)

May: Dedication of Advanced LIGO
May 19, 2015 — The Advanced LIGO Project, a major upgrade that will increase the sensitivity of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatories instruments by a factor of 10 and provide a 1,000-fold increase in the number of astrophysical candidates for gravitational wave signals, was officially dedicated today in a ceremony held at the LIGO Hanford facility in Richland, Washington. Read more at Caltech News.

April: What Comes Next to LIGO?
April 1, 2015 — “What comes next for LIGO? Planning for the post-detection era in gravitational-wave detectors and astrophysics” workshop, Silver Spring, Maryland, May 7-8 2015. The detection of LIGO’s first gravitational wave will be a transformational event, opening new avenues for astrophysical exploration, opportunities to build more powerful detectors directed at known source populations and data analysis enhancements informed by direct detection. Participants in this workshop will discuss how the first few detections might influence which paths offer the best opportunities, and how the community can be prepared with appropriate plans, including international networks and outreach of gravitational wave science to the broad scientific community. We invite gravitational wave scientists, astronomers, and astrophysicists to participate in this discussion. Focus panels will summarize discussions and write up conclusions after the meeting.

January: “LIGO Generations” documentary released
January 30, 2015 — On January 30, 2015 a new documentary about LIGO titled “LIGO Generations” was released on Space.com. The 25-min film by Kai Staats shows how scientists bridge the gap between the special language of astrophysics and bright young scientists.

January: Latest BICEP2/Keck Array/Planck Results on Primordial Gravitational Waves
January 30, 2015 — A new joint analysis of BICEP2/Keck Array and Planck data fits the CMBR polarization measurements carried out by these experiments to an improved model of galactic dust and a possible contribution from primordial gravitational waves generated by inflation. This new analysis yields a new upper limit for the contribution from primordial gravitational waves but no longer disfavours a zero contribution at high statistical significance. The authors conclude that to better constrain, or to definitively detect, primordial inflationary gravitational waves will therefore require additional data. Hence for the moment the search for primordial gravitational waves continues, although the authors note that many other experiments to measure CMBR polarization are currently underway.

August: LIGO Open Data Center (LOSC) Releases S5 Data
August 22, 2014 — On August 22, 2014, the LIGO Laboratory and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) announced the public release of two years of data taken by the three LIGO gravitational-wave detectors the during its fifth science run, 2005-2007 (S5).

The LIGO data release comes with detailed metadata, tutorials, tools, and software to enable effective analysis. It will enable broad participation in the advancement of gravitational wave physics and astrophysics, from professional and amateur scientists, graduate students, undergraduates and secondary students. Participants learn about and help to improve the scientific results that come from this ambitious astronomical observatory, including the verification of results already established by the LSC.

The LIGO S5 data have been analyzed by the LSC, and no gravitational-wave candidate signals have been found. However, this is the first of many data releases, including data from the upcoming Advanced LIGO observations, where the gravitational-wave community expects to find such signals. Numerical relativists, relativity theorists, and astrophysicists will use LIGO observations to better understand the dynamics of strongly curved spacetime, and the origins and properties of gravitational wave sources.

The effort to release LIGO data in a form that is easily understood and used by the broader community will facilitate and improve the data analysis efforts of the LSC, and ease the transition towards shared data analysis with partner gravitational wave efforts in Italy, Japan, India, and elsewhere.

Please visit the LIGO Open Science Center (LOSC) website. The site contains many resources to help users understand gravitational-wave science and the LIGO data. Users are encouraged to sign up for the email list, to stay informed of updates and future data releases from this site, and to send questions and comments to the LOSC development team.

April: LIGO Starring in a New Documentary
April 15, 2014 — On April 15, 2014, a documentary about LIGO, titled “LIGO, A Passion for Understanding” made its debut on Space.com. The 22-min movie by filmmaker Kai Staats explores LIGO science and technology and profiles its people.

March: LSC Congratulates BICEP2 Colleagues
March 18, 2014 — On March 17, 2014, scientists at the BICEP2 Project announced that they have acquired the first direct evidence that gravitational waves rippled through our infant universe during an explosive period of growth called inflation. The BICEP2 Collaboration result, if confirmed, is a landmark discovery in cosmology, allowing us for the first time to peer back almost to the moment of the Big Bang through the observation of the imprint of primordial gravitational waves on the cosmic microwave background. The LIGO Scientific Collaboration congratulates our BICEP colleagues on their accomplishment and will further follow discoveries and implications of these observations with great interest.

This result highlights the unique role that gravitational wave observations will play in understanding the universe in the coming years, demonstrating the possibility to study the earliest time in the evolution of the Universe, and the physics of the correspondingly high energies, using gravitational waves. Direct measurements of the cosmological gravitational waves at a variety of frequencies will be necessary to fully understand the physics of inflation. Furthermore, when Advanced LIGO gravitational-wave detector comes online in the second half of this decade, we anticipate it will directly measure gravitational waves created by the most violent compact astrophysical sources in the universe — colliding neutron stars and black holes as well as supernovae — opening an entirely new window onto the universe through gravitational-wave astronomy.

January: LSC Spokesperson Gabriela Gonzalez recognized as Woman Physicist of the Month by the American Physical Society
January 11, 2014 — From the APS website: “Gabriela Gonzalez, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Louisiana State University, is currently serving her second term as the Spokesperson for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. In this position, she oversees the work of over 900 scientists from 86 institutions and 17 countries, representing the Collaboration professionally to the scientific community and to the public. In the years before being elected as LSC Spokesperson, Gonzalez led the LIGO working group on detector characterization (instrumentation) and the working group on seeking gravitational waves from compact binary coalescences (data analysis), and held countless scientific and administrative positions in the LSC. What isn’t always as visible is the time and attention she invests in the people around her. Once you have come into her sphere of influence, she’ll always have time for you and care for you as a whole person — both as a physicist and a unique individual.”

August: LIGO at the Aspen Science Festival
August 11, 2013 — The touring version of Astronomy’s New Messengers takes to the road again to delight children and adults alike at the 2013 Aspen Science Festival Science Street Fair, a daylong event featuring a non-stop program of interactive exhibits, experiments, games, and shows held in Paepcke Park, Aspen, Colorado. Astronomy’s New Messengers once more showcased LIGO’s cool technology to observe the Universe not through light but through gravity. Gravitational waves – ripples of space-time – were theorized by Einstein almost a century ago. LIGO now pushes the frontiers of science and engineering to try and catch these waves for the first time, and explore the death throes of stars, black hole collisions, even the origin of the Universe in a way humans never have before. 

Identification and follow-up of electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave candidate events
June 6, 2013 — In anticipation of the beginning of data collection in 2015, LSC and Virgo are working on developing a program of accompanying electromagnetic observations.

March: Gabriela Gonzalez re-elected as the LSC Spokesperson
March 20, 2013 — Gabriela Gonzalez, a professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University, has been re-elected as the LSC Spokesperson.

February: The LSC adopts a Diversity Statement
February 8, 2013 — The under-representation of women and minorities in science is a matter of concern that transcends national borders and affects all scientific institutions across the globe. On February 8, 2013, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) Council voted unanimously in favor of approving the following statement:

As members of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, we recognize the importance of diversity to enrich our research and scholarship. We pledge to provide a welcoming, inclusive environment to talented individuals regardless of characteristics such as, but not limited to, physical ability, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, economic status, or personal religious practices, and to support the professional growth of all collaboration members.

We also pledge to work to increase the numbers of women and under-represented minorities that actively participate in the LSC, to pursue recruitment, mentoring, retention and promotion of women and under-represented minority scientists and engineers and to maximize their contribution to excellence in our research. As a collaboration, we will strive to create a professional climate that encourages inclusion and that respects and values diversity.

This statement recognizes that the academic strength of the LSC is closely linked to its diversity and encourages all LSC members to sign on to this viewpoint.

LIGO Debuts Two New Information Resources
Feb 2012 — To the general public, the dense technical nature of much scientific research can make the entire activity sometimes seem inscrutable. Scientists collaborate closely and often communicate in a shared language of acronyms, codes, abbreviations and insider lingo. They diagram strategies on classroom chalkboards and debate vehemently around beige conference tables. Much of their thinking is expressed in the symbolic notations of mathematics. All combined these can prove a high barrier to an understanding by non-professionals. As a result, the work of scientists might go unnoticed for years until such time as some stunning discovery is announced or a revolutionary technology is revealed.

This is unfortunate because the stepping stones on the path to a big discovery can be fascinating themselves. Often these “small victories” provide a better insight into the actual processes of scientific research than do the sudden headlines of a dramatic discovery announced.

The trailblazing work of LIGO comprises hundreds of scientists and dozens of premier institutions all working toward a common goal – the discovery and study of gravitational waves. All involved firmly believe that the Advanced LIGO detectors will capture this prize. But in the build up to that day, vital and significant science is underway around the clock.

To share news of these important advances with interested members of the public, LIGO has developed two new online resources to describe, as non-technically as possible, the progress our team members are making in two pivotal directions: science and technology.

First are the Science Summaries. LIGO now regularly publishes “outreach abstracts” of significant new research publications, which include the data in plots and tables.

Second is the LIGO Technology Development and Migration webpage. Here we describe real case histories in which technological innovations powered by LIGO research have traveled on to other areas of science and industry. Find out about the “Fast Chirp Transform,” the “Holographic Quantum Geometry” and the “Diode Pumped Laser,” among others.

September 2011: GEO Squeezing experiment a glowing success
September 11, 2011 — Current state-of-the-art interferometric gravitational wave detectors seek to detect gravitational waves through observation of interference patterns produced by the combination of two coherent light sources. Their basic design is that of a kilometer-scale Michelson-type laser interferometer, where a laser beam in an ultra-high-vacuum system is first split in two perpendicular arms and then reflected back by suspended mirrors to produce interference. Gravitational waves are expected to change the relative lengths of the two arms according to well-defined sequence, yielding interference patterns at the detector output. Encoded in these light patterns is the information about the source and nature of the gravitational waves. A global network of interferometric gravitational wave observatory currently exists, comprising two LIGO observatories in the USA (not operational since Nov. 2010 due to upgrade activity), the Virgo project of the European Gravitational Observatory Observatory in Italy and the German-British detector GEO600 in Germany. Further observatories are being planned or proposed in Japan, Australia and Europe.

Light obeys the laws of quantum mechanics. Because of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the quanta of light (photons) exhibit an intrinsic quantum indeterminacy. Quantum fluctuations of the laser light in gravitational wave interferometers then produce unwanted instrumental ”shot” noise, even when the instrument output is measured with an ideal photo detector. Recent advances in the theory and applications of optical measurements have discovered that there exist some quantum states of light with very small noise. In particular, ”squeezed light” states show a noise level which is even smaller than the minimum noise of incoherent light made of independent photons. The low noise of squeezed light makes it very attractive for a number of applications from optical communications to quantum cryptography and gravitational-wave detection. Squeezed light can be generated in nonlinear optical crystals and was first demonstrated in 1985. Since its first observation, squeezed light sources have constantly been improved but the generation of squeezing remained an unsolved problem at frequencies where gravitational wave detectors operate. The results presented here by the GEO600 collaboration show that squeezed light can be successfully integrated in current and future interferometric gravitational wave observatories, and become a key technology in making gravitational wave astronomy a reality.

August 2011: New LIGO Executive Director Named
August 24, 2011 — David Reitze has been named executive director of LIGO. A professor of physics at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and a visiting associate at Caltech since 2007, Reitze will succeed the retiring Jay Marx. Marx, a senior research associate in physics at Caltech, served as executive director since 2006 and will continue to work on LIGO part-time. 

July 2011: LIGO partners with the 2012 US Science and Engineering Festival

The LSC exhibited at the Expo giving visitors a chance to immerse themselves in the work of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), science’s cool technology to observe the Universe not through light but through gravity. Gravitational waves – ripples of space-time – were theorized by Einstein almost a century ago. LIGO now pushes the frontiers of science and engineering to try and catch these waves for the first time, and explore the death throes of stars, black hole collisions, even the origin of the Universe in a way humans never have before.

April 2011: Gabriela Gonzalez elected as new LSC Spokesperson
Gabriela Gonzalez of the Louisiana State University has been elected as the new Spokesperson of the LSC. Gonzalez, a professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University, is a Fellow of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation; the American Physical Society; and the Institute of Physics.

March 2011: “Blind Injection” stress-tests LIGO and Virgo’s search form gravitational waves
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration completed an end-to-end system test of their detection capabilities at a recent joint collaboration meeting in Arcadia, CA. Analysis of data from LIGO and Virgo’s most recent observation run revealed evidence of the elusive signal from a neutron star spiraling into a black hole. The collaboration knew that the “detection” could be a “blind injection” — a fake signal added to the data without telling the analysts, to test the detector and analysis. Nonetheless, the collaboration proceeded under the assumption that the signal was real, and wrote and approved a scientific paper reporting the ground-breaking discovery. A few moments later, according to plan, it was revealed that the signal was indeed a blind injection.

While the scientists were disappointed that the discovery was not real, the success of the analysis was a compelling demonstration of the collaboration’s readiness to detect gravitational waves. LIGO and Virgo scientists are looking forward to observations with the advanced detectors which are expected to contain many real signals from the distant reaches of the universe.

June: LSC at the World Science Festival

June 2-6, 2010 — Astronomy’s New Messengers, an interactive exhibit about LIGO and LSC, was on display at the 2010 World Science Festival in New York City. 

December 2009: LIGO begins joint observing with SWIFT, TAROT, and QUEST Dec 9, 2009 — LIGO and Virgo began working with three telescopes – the NASA SWIFT satellite, Telescopes Action Rapide pour les Objets Transitoires (TAROT), and Project QUEST – to conduct searches for simultaneous gravitational wave and electromagnetic emissions from astrophysical events such as supernovae and gamma-ray bursts.

The two LIGO interferometers and the Virgo interferometer analyze date to rapidly identify and triangulate possible gravitational wave candidates. The position is sent to Swift, TAROT and QUEST, which then rapidly point their telescopes toward the source location to perform follow-up X-ray observations (in the case of Swift) or optical follow-ups (for TAROT and QUEST). The observation of a gravitational wave signal together with an associated electromagnetic signal can provide a significant amount of information about the astrophysics of potential sources, for example, short hard gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) or galactic supernova. While gravitational waves have not yet been detected, the simultaneous observation of a strong gravitational wave signal together with an electromagnetic signal would provide compelling evidence for the first detection. These searches are a new way of doing gravitational wave astronomy and point the way toward the future in which gravitational wave observatories play an important role in future astronomical observations. In addition to Swift, TAROT, and QUEST, the LIGO Scientific and Virgo Collaborations are developing agreements with other wide field optical telescopes as well as with radio telescopes and neutrino detectors to search for correlated gravitational wave astrophysical phenomena.

The NASA Swift observatory is a low earth orbit satellite whose primary mission is to investigate gamma ray bursts. Télescopes á Action Rapide pour les Objets Transitoires (TAROT) operates wide-field telescopes in France and Chile and is managed by the Observatoire de Haute Provence, France. The QUEST project uses a 10 square degree camera on the ESO Schmidt telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, and is a collaboration between Yale University, Indiana University, and Berkeley.

November 2009: ROPP selects an LSC paper as one of its 2009 highlights Editorial Board of Reports on Progress in Physics selected “LIGO: The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory” to its list of 2009 highlights.

October 2009: NJP highlights a LIGO paper Editorial Board of New Journal of Physics selected “Observation of a kilogram-scale oscillator near its quantum ground state” as one of its highlights of 2009.

August 2009: Astronomy’s Messengers comes to universities in Southeastern US
In keeping with LIGO’s continuing mission to educate the public of its activities, “Astronomy’s Messengers: listening to the universe with gravitational waves”, a touring exhibit developed by LSC scientists in conjunction with Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership is traveling in the southeastern United States. 

June 2009: LIGO Exhibit at the 2009 World Science Festival

June 2009: CQG picks LIGO-GEO600 paper among Journal’s 2009 highlights At their annual meeting in June 2009, the Editorial Board of Classical and Quantum Gravity nominated a LIGO-GEO600 paper as a highlight of the journal’s the journal’s 2009 publications.