Scientists from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Ligo) are reportedly set to make fresh announcements about a new set of discoveries, only two weeks after producing evidence confirming the existence of Einstein's gravitational waves.
Ligo lab experts say they may have detected some of the universes 'most violent events' which potentially include black hole clashes and neutron star collisions. According to The Sunday Times, the scientists are about to reveal findings from more extensive space experiments.
"The most likely events Ligo would detect are binary black holes coalescing with each other, and we already have evidence that we have seen a second such event," said David Reitze, executive director of the Ligo laboratory. "However, we are also looking at a handful of other candidates. The other most likely sources we have a chance of seeing include two neutron stars coalescing or a black hole eating a neutron star. They would all produce a similar characteristic signal."
Einstein was right
On 11 February, a team of scientists from Caltech, MIT and Ligo confirmed the landmark discovery of gravitational waves or 'ripples' in the fabric of space-time caused by the waves from two colliding black holes. The existence of such waves was first predicted by Alert Einstein a century ago but, until last year, scientists had no full-proof way of testing for their existence.
Then, gravitational waves were successfully detected on 14 September 2015 at both the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (Ligo) detectors, located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington.
Following the discovery, Kip Thorne, professor of theoretical physics at Caltech said that Ligo had opened 'a new window on the universe' and predicted the team would soon make more detections.
"We ought to see some more [findings] over the coming year," he asserted at the time. "Ligo is at a third of its ultimate design sensitivity. That means you will be able to see three times farther in the universe… after this tweaking, the rate will be 30 times higher than it is now." It appears Thorne was correct.
The pioneering Ligo research is carried out by the Ligo Scientific Collaboration (LSC) which is a group consisting of more than 1,000 scientists from academia in the US and 14 other countries – including the UK. Indeed, British scientists worked closely on the discovery, with several universities including Glasgow, Cardiff, Birmingham and Southampton all playing a part in analysing the data collected from the US-based Ligo detectors.