LIGO is the largest and most ambitious project ever funded by the NSF.
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17 Facts About LIGO
2.
LIGO concept built upon early work by many scientists to test a component of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, the existence of gravitational waves.
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4.
Drever, Thorne, and Weiss formed a LIGO steering committee, though they were turned down for funding in 1984 and 1985.
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5.
From 1989 through 1994, LIGO failed to progress technically and organizationally.
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6.
In 1994, with a budget of US$395 million, LIGO stood as the largest overall funded NSF project in history.
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7.
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration is a forum for organizing technical and scientific research in LIGO.
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8.
On 18 September 2015, Advanced LIGO began its first formal science observations at about four times the sensitivity of the initial LIGO interferometers.
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9.
On 16 June 2016 LIGO announced a second signal was detected from the merging of two black holes with 14.
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10.
LIGO resumed operation after shutdown for improvements on 26 March 2019, with Virgo expected to join the network 1 April 2019.
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11.
LIGO's mission is to directly observe gravitational waves of cosmic origin.
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12.
LIGO pointed out the 1962 paper and mentioned the possibility of detecting gravitational waves if the interferometric technology and measuring techniques improved.
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13.
Such a constraint was predicated on LIGO eventually demonstrating a direct detection of gravitational waves.
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14.
The waveform showed up on 14 September 2015, within just two days of when the Advanced LIGO detectors started collecting data after their upgrade.
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15.
On 15 June 2016, LIGO announced the detection of a second gravitational wave event, recorded on 26 December 2015, at 3:38 UTC.
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16.
On 6 January 2020, LIGO announced the detection of what appeared to be gravitational ripples from a collision of two neutron stars, recorded on 25 April 2019, by the LIGO Livingston detector.
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