Summaries of LSC Scientific Publications
We now feature, for each new research article, a summary written for the general public.
Simply click on any of the titles for an online version,
or on the '[flyer]' links for a downloadable file in PDF format.
Translations into several languages are also available for some of these summaries.
Where not noted separately, translations can be accessed through their language acronyms (e.g. 'es' for Spanish, also see details in the sidebar) or from the top of the English online versions.
Latest detections
|
GWTC-2
(Oct 28, 2020) |
Catalog paper summarizing previous and new detections from the O3a observing run:
GWTC-2: An Expanded Catalog Of Gravitational-Wave Detections
[flyer]
Also in:
Bengali [bn] |
Catalan [ca] |
Chinese (simplified) [zh-Hans] |
Chinese (traditional) [zh-Hant] |
French [fr] |
German [de] |
Greek [el] |
Hindi [hi] |
Italian [it] |
Japanese [ja] |
Korean [ko] |
Polish [pl] |
Spanish [es]
.
Companion papers:
|
GW190521
(Sep 2, 2020) |
GW190521: The Most Massive Black Hole Collision Observed To Date
[flyer]
Also in:
Blackfoot [bla]
| Catalan [ca]
| Chinese (traditional) [zh-Hant]
| Dutch [nl]
| French [fr]
| Galician [gl]
| German [de]
| Greek [el]
| Hindi [hi]
| Hungarian [hu]
| Italian [it]
| Japanese [ja]
| Korean [ko]
| Marathi [mr]
| Polish [pl]
| Spanish [es]
|
GW190814
(Jun 23, 2020) |
The Curious Case of GW190814: The Coalescence of a Stellar-Mass Black Hole and a Mystery Compact Object
[flyer]
Also in:
Blackfoot [bla]
| Chinese (traditional) [zh-Hant]
| Dutch [nl]
| French [fr]
| German [de]
| Italian [it]
| Japanese [ja]
| Marathi [mr]
| Polish [pl]
| Spanish [es]
Supplement:
Measuring Cosmic Expansion with Dark Standard Siren GW190814
|
GW190412
(Apr 20, 2020) |
GW190412: The First Observation of an Unequal-Mass Black Hole Merger
[flyer]
Also in:
Bengali [bn]
| Blackfoot [bla]
| Chinese (traditional) [zh-Hant]
| Dutch [nl]
| French [fr]
| German [de]
| Italian [it]
| Japanese [ja]
| Korean [ko]
| Marathi [mr]
| Nepali [ne]
| Polish [pl]
| Spanish [es]
|
GW190425
(Jan 06, 2020) |
GW190425: The heaviest binary neutron star system ever seen?
[flyer]
Also in:
Chinese [zh]
| French [fr]
| German [de]
| Greek [el]
| Hebrew [he]
| Italian [it]
| Japanese [ja]
| Korean [ko]
| Spanish [es]
|
Other recent summaries
|
| May 13, 2021 |
Gravity bending gravity: are any of the O3a LIGO-Virgo detections gravitationally lensed?
[flyer]
| [pl]
|
| Apr 30, 2021 |
Surfing the big glitcher: gravitational waves from r-mode oscillations in PSR J0537-6910
[flyer]
| [it]
| [pl]
|
| Mar 19, 2021 |
Binary black holes tell us how fast the universe is expanding
[flyer]
|
| Mar 16, 2021 |
Search for anisotropies in the gravitational-wave backgrounds
[flyer]
| [es]
| [it]
|
| Feb 01, 2021 |
Constraints on cosmic strings using data from the third Advanced LIGO-Virgo observing run
[flyer]
| [es]
| [it]
| [ja]
| [pl]
| [zh]
|
| Feb 01, 2021 |
Upper Limits on the Isotropic Gravitational-Wave Background from Advanced LIGO's and Advanced Virgo's First Three Observing Runs
[flyer]
| [es]
| [it]
| [ja]
| [nl]
| [pl]
|
| Dec 25, 2020 |
You Spin Me Round (Like A Star): Searching for continuous gravitational waves from unknown binary neutron stars
[flyer]
| [ca]
| [es]
| [it]
| [ja]
| [pl]
| [pt]
| [zh]
|
| Dec 25, 2020 |
Why is the X-ray pulsar J0537-6910 slowing down so rapidly?
[flyer]
| [es]
| [it]
| [ja]
| [pl]
|
| Jul 29, 2020 |
No mountains yet on millisecond pulsars
[flyer]
| [el]
| [es]
| [fr]
| [it]
| [ja]
| [pl]
| [zh]
|
Older detections
|
GWTC-1
(Dec 03, 2018) |
Catalog paper summarizing previous and new detections from the first two advanced detector observing runs:
GWTC-1: A New Catalog of Gravitational-Wave Detections [flyer]
Also in
French [fr] |
German [de] |
Italian [it] |
Polish [pl] |
Spanish [es]
.
Companion papers: (also available in some other languages):
|
GW170608
(Nov 15, 2017) |
Detection paper:
GW170608: LIGO's Lightest Black Hole Binary? [flyer]
Also in
French [fr]
| German [de]
| Italian [it].
|
GW170817
(Oct 16, 2017) |
Detection paper:
GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral
[flyer]
Also in
Chinese [zh] |
French [fr] |
German [de] |
Italian [it] |
Russian [ru] |
Spanish [es].
Companion papers (also available in some other languages):
|
GW170814
(Sep 27, 2017) |
Detection paper:
GW170814: A three-detector observation of gravitational waves from a binary black hole coalescence [flyer]
Also in
French [fr]
| German [de]
| Italian [it]
| Polish [pl]
| Spanish [es].
|
GW170104
(Jun 1, 2017) |
Detection paper:
GW170104: Observation of a 50 Solar-mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence at Redshift 0.2
[flyer]
Also in
Chinese [zh]
| French [fr]
| German [de]
| Italian [it]
| Polish [pl]
| Spanish [es].
|
GW151226
(Jun 15, 2016) |
Detection paper:
GW151226: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a 22 Solar-mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence
[flyer]
Also in
French [fr] |
German [de] |
Italian [it] |
Spanish [es]
|
GW150914
(Feb 11, 2016) |
Detection paper:
Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger
[flyer]
Also in
Chinese [zh]
| French [fr]
| German [de]
| Italian [it]
| Japanese [ja]
| Spanish [es].
Companion papers (also available in some other languages):
|
Other publications
|
2020
|
| May 27, 2020 |
Improving gravitational wave searches for a wandering continuous wave signal from Scorpius X-1
[flyer]
|
| Mar 04, 2020 |
How Gravitational-Wave Alerts during the second Advanced LIGO and Virgo observing run enabled the multi-messenger discovery of GW170817
[flyer]
|
| Mar 02, 2020 |
Searching for weak gamma-ray bursts paired with gravitational-wave events
[flyer]
|
| Jan 08, 2020 |
Open data from the first and second observing runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo
[flyer]
|
2019
|
| Dec 20, 2019 |
An Optically Targeted Search for Gravitational Waves from Core-Collapse Supernovae during O1 and O2
[flyer]
|
| Nov 29, 2019 |
Search for Eccentric Binary Black Hole Mergers
[flyer]
| [de]
|
| Nov 29, 2019 |
Constraining the p-mode - g-mode tidal instability with GW170817
[flyer]
| [de]
|
| Oct 14, 2019 |
In Pursuit of a Multi-Messenger Mystery: Gravitational Waves from Gamma-Ray Bursts in LIGO's Second Observing Run
[flyer]
| [de]
|
| Oct 14, 2019 |
A search for sub-solar mass black holes
[flyer]
| [de]
|
| Oct 14, 2019 |
Testing General Relativity in the Presence of Matter
[flyer]
| [de]
|
| Aug 30, 2019 |
A guide to LIGO-Virgo detector noise and extraction of transient gravitational-wave signals
[flyer]
| [de]
| [fr]
| [it]
|
| Aug 19, 2019 |
Hunting for gravitational waves from known pulsars relaxing the spin assumption with LIGO O2 data
[flyer]
| [de]
|
| Aug 12, 2019 |
Using gravitational wave observations to learn about ultra-dense matter
[flyer]
| [de]
|
| Aug 07, 2019 |
Digging deeper into the data for the youngest neutron stars in the galaxy
[flyer]
| [de]
|
| Jul 12, 2019 |
All-sky search for short-duration gravitational wave transients in the second Advanced LIGO observing run
[flyer]
| [de]
|
| Jun 21, 2019 |
Search for intermediate mass black hole binaries in the first and second observing runs of the Advanced LIGO and Virgo network
[flyer]
| [de]
|
| May 28, 2019 |
All-sky search for continuous gravitational waves from isolated neutron stars using Advanced LIGO O2 data
[flyer]
| [de]
|
| May 28, 2019 |
Searching for persistent gravitational waves with Advanced LIGO data from the second observing run
[flyer]
| [de]
|
| May 28, 2019 |
Searching for continuous gravitational waves from pulsars at two frequencies
[flyer]
| [de]
|
| Apr 01, 2019 |
All-sky search for long-duration gravitational wave transients in the second Advanced LIGO observing run
[flyer]
| [de]
|
| Mar 12, 2019 |
Tests of General Relativity with gravitational waves from black hole mergers
[flyer]
| [de]
|
| Mar 08, 2019 |
Searching for a Gravitational Wave Background During Advanced LIGO's Second Observing Run
[flyer]
| [de]
|
| Mar 08, 2019 |
Searching for Gravitational Waves from Magnetars
[flyer]
| [de]
|
2018
|
| Nov 09, 2018 |
All-sky search for long-duration gravitational wave transients in the first Advanced LIGO observing run
[flyer]
|
| Oct 30, 2018 |
A search for sub-solar mass black holes
[flyer]
|
| Oct 30, 2018 |
Searching for Gravitational Waves From Cosmic Strings
[flyer]
|
| Jun 4, 2018 |
Looking for "Forbidden" Polarizations in the Gravitational-wave Background with Advanced LIGO [flyer]
|
| Jun 4, 2018 |
First Search for Continuous Gravitational Waves beyond General Relativity [flyer]
|
| Jun 4, 2018 |
Hunting for Gravitational Waves from Known Pulsars within a Narrow Range of Candidate Frequencies [flyer]
|
| Jun 4, 2018 |
All-sky Search for High-frequency Continuous Gravitational Waves in the First Advanced LIGO Observing Run [flyer]
|
| Mar 16, 2018 |
A Bright Today and Brighter Tomorrow: Prospects for Gravitational-wave Astronomy With Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo, and KAGRA [flyer]
|
| Mar 5, 2018 |
Hunting Low-Frequency Continuous Gravitational Waves With the Einstein@Home Distributed Computing System [flyer]
|
| Mar 5, 2018 |
Searching the Entire Sky for Continuous Gravitational Waves from Rapidly Rotating Neutron Stars in Advanced LIGO Data [flyer]
|
| Mar 5, 2018 |
Searching for Gravitational Waves from a Nearby Globular Cluster [flyer]
|
| Mar 5, 2018 |
All-sky Search for Continuous Gravitational Waves With the Einstein@Home Distributed Computing System [flyer]
|
2017
|
| Jun 18, 2017 |
A Sensitive Search for Continuous Gravitational Waves from Scorpius X-1 with Advanced LIGO [flyer]
|
| Jun 1, 2017 |
Search for Mergers of Intermediate-mass Black Holes
[flyer]
|
| May 22, 2017 |
Search for Core-collapse Supernovae in Initial LIGO and Virgo Data
[flyer]
|
| May 1, 2017 |
Searching for Continuous Gravitational-wave Signals: Casting a Wide and Fine Net
[flyer]
|
| Apr 12, 2017 |
Searching for a Wandering Continuous Wave Signal from Scorpius X-1
[flyer]
|
| Feb 3, 2017 |
Searching for Continuous Gravitational Waves from Pulsars
[flyer]
| [es]
|
2016
|
| Dec 13, 2016 |
Mapping the Gravitational Wave Sky
[flyer] |
| Dec 13, 2016 |
Listening for the Background of Gravitational Waves with Advanced LIGO
[flyer] |
| Nov 29, 2016 |
What's Behind the Mysterious Gamma-ray Bursts? LIGO's Search for Clues to Their Origins
[flyer] |
| Jun 21, 2016 |
Searching for Gravitational Wave Bursts in Coincidence with Short Duration Radio Bursts
[flyer] |
| Apr 20, 2016 |
The Sensitivity of the Advanced LIGO Detectors at the Beginning of Gravitational Wave Astronomy
[flyer]
| [es]
|
2015
|
| Dec 23, 2015 |
Planning for a Bright Tomorrow: Prospects for Gravitational-wave Astronomy with Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo
[flyer]
| [es]
|
| Nov 24, 2015 |
Stuck in the Middle: An All-Sky Search for Gravitational Waves of Intermediate Duration
[flyer] |
| Oct 14, 2015 |
First Search for Low Frequency Continuous Gravitational Waves Emitted by Unseen Neutron Stars
[flyer] |
| Oct 14, 2015 |
Scouting Our Galactic Neighborhood
[flyer] |
2014
|
| Dec 22, 2014 |
Searching for the Youngest Neutron Stars in the Galaxy
[flyer] |
| Dec 8, 2014 |
Combing Initial LIGO Data for the Potentially Strong Continuous Wave Emitter Scorpius X-1
[flyer] |
| Oct 31, 2014 |
An Extended Search for Gravitational Waves from the Crab and Vela Pulsars
[flyer] |
| Oct 31, 2014 |
Search for a Gravitational-wave Background Using Co-located LIGO Detectors
[flyer] |
| Oct 30, 2014 |
Cleaning Up LIGO Data
[flyer] |
| Jul 7, 2014 |
Capturing Invisible Cosmic Explosions
[flyer]
| [es]
|
| Jun 25, 2014 |
Searching for a Background Buzz of Gravitational Waves
[flyer] |
| Jun 4, 2014 |
Searching for the Continuous Sounds of Unknown Neutron Stars in Binary Systems
[flyer] |
| May 15, 2014 |
Leveraging the GEO600 Detector to Search for Gravitational Waves from Gamma-ray Bursts
[flyer]
| [es]
|
| Apr 15, 2014 |
Searching for Gravitational Waves Associated with Gamma-ray Bursts Detected by the InterPlanetary Network
[flyer]
| [es]
|
| Apr 09, 2014 |
Observing the Invisible Collisions of Intermediate Mass Black Holes
[flyer]
| [es]
|
| Mar 26, 2014 |
Ringing of the Cosmic Bells: A Search for Black Hole Vibrations
[flyer]
| [es]
|
| Feb 24, 2014 |
All-sky Search for Continuous Gravitational Waves in the Virgo Data
[flyer]
| [es]
|
| Jan 16, 2014 |
Can we Hear Black Holes Collide? Testing Our Search Methods using Numerically Generated Gravitational-wave Signals
[flyer]
| [es]
|
2013
|
| Nov 14, 2013 |
Do Cosmic Strings Exist?
[flyer]
| [es]
|
| Nov 14, 2013 |
Searching for Continuous Gravitational Wave Signals with the Hough Transform
[flyer]
| [es]
|
| Oct 16, 2013 |
Scanning the Skies for Cosmic Explosions: First Search for Optical Counterparts to Gravitational Waves
[flyer]
| [es]
|
| Oct 04, 2013 |
A Search for Long-lived Gravitational Waves Associated with Long Gamma-ray Bursts
[flyer]
| [es]
|
| Sep 26, 2013 |
How High Are Pulsar "Mountains"?
[flyer]
| [es]
|
| Sep 26, 2013 |
Listening for the Hum of Neutron Stars in the Center of Our Galaxy
[flyer]
| [es]
|
| Aug 02, 2013 |
The Quantum Enhanced LIGO Detector Sets New Sensitivity Record
[flyer]
| [es]
|
| Apr 05, 2013 |
What Gravitational Waves Can Tell Us About Colliding Stars and Black Holes
[flyer]
| [es]
|
2012
|
| Oct 01, 2012 |
Dance of the Dead Stars: A Search for Massive Binary Black Hole Coalescences
[flyer] |
| Aug 03, 2012 |
Hunting Continuous Gravitational Waves with the Einstein@Home Distributed Computing System
[flyer] |
| May 15, 2012 |
New Cosmic Messengers: First Joint Search for Gravitational Waves and High Energy Neutrinos
[flyer] |
| May 11, 2012 |
A Search for Gravitational Waves from Gamma-Ray Bursts
[flyer] |
| May 08, 2012 |
X-Rays and Gravitational Waves: LIGO and Virgo Point the Way for the Swift Satellite
[flyer] |
| Apr 02, 2012 |
Virgo Data Characterization and Impact on Gravitational Wave Searches
[flyer] |
| Mar 14, 2012 |
Sensitivity of LIGO and Virgo Gravitational Wave Detectors to Compact Binary Inspirals
[flyer] |
| Feb 15, 2012 |
Listening for Gravitational Waves with "Ears Wide Open"
[flyer] |
| Feb 06, 2012 |
Optical, X-ray, and Radio Telescopes Seek Explosive Sources of Gravitational Waves
[flyer] |
| Jan 31, 2012 |
Search for Gravitational Waves from Intermediate Mass Binary Black Holes
[flyer] |
| Jan 23, 2012 |
Implications for the Origin of GRB 051103 from LIGO Observations
[flyer] |
| Jan 11, 2012 |
First Low-Latency LIGO+Virgo Search for Binary Inspirals and their Electromagnetic Counterparts
[flyer] |
| Jan 03, 2012 |
Directional Limits on Persistent Gravitational Waves Using LIGO S5 Science Data
[flyer] |
2011
|
| Dec 21, 2011 |
Upper Limits on a Stochastic GW Background Using LIGO and Virgo Interferometers at 600-1000
Hz
[flyer] |
| Dec 01, 2011 |
A Search for Gravitational Waves from Inspiraling Neutron Stars and Black Holes
[flyer] |
| Sep 11, 2011 |
A Gravitational Wave Observatory Operating Beyond the Quantum Shot-noise Limit
[flyer] |
Looking down a detector arm
Visitors at LIGO Hanford Observatory gaze down the site's X arm. Half of the 4-kilometer length of the arm is visible in the
photo. (Credit: LIGO Laboratory)
Translations: language keys
For most summaries, we list the available translations by their
ISO 639-1 /
ISO 639-2
keys,
as listed below.
Translations are a volunteer effort and different sets of languages are available
for each summary.
You can search for the key of your language, in square brackets –
for instance [fr] for French –
on this page to find all science summaries that have been translated into it.
- [bla]: Blackfoot
- [bn]: Bengali (Bangla)
- [ca]: Catalan (Català)
- [de]: German (Deutsch)
- [el]: Greek (Ellinika)
- [es]: Spanish (Español)
- [fr]: French (Français)
- [gl]: Galician (Galego)
- [he]: Hebrew (Ivrit)
- [hi]: Hindi
- [hu]: Hungarian (Magyar)
- [it]: Italian (Italiano)
- [ja]: Japanese (Nihongo)
- [ko]: Korean (Hanguk-eo)
- [mr]: Marathi
- [ne]: Nepali
- [nl]: Dutch (Nederlands)
- [pl]: Polish (Polszczyzna)
- [pt]: Portuguese (Português)
- [ru]: Russian (Rússkiy)
- [zh]: Chinese (Hànyǔ); sometimes two versions are available:
[zh-Hans] (simplified characters)
[zh-Hant] (traditional characters)
