For the first time three gravitational wave detectors have recorded the same event. The detection was made by both LIGO and Advanced Virgo (which has just recently begun collecting data for the first time). From the news release:
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo collaboration report the first joint detection of gravitational waves with both the LIGO and Virgo detectors. This is the fourth announced detection of a binary black hole system and the first significant gravitational-wave signal recorded by the Virgo detector, and highlights the scientific potential of a three-detector network of gravitational-wave detectors.
The three-detector observation was made on August 14, 2017 at 10:30:43 UTC. The two Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors, located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington, and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Virgo detector, located near Pisa, Italy, detected a transient gravitational-wave signal produced by the coalescence of two stellar mass black holes.
A paper about the event, known as GW170814, has been accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters.
(Score: 3, Informative) by stormwyrm on Thursday September 28 2017, @05:35AM (9 children)
The three detectors let them figure out where the merger was in the sky to within 60 square degrees. That's just a little less than the smallest constellation, Crux, which is 68 square degrees. Not too bad, but hopefully they can get better precision soon.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 28 2017, @05:46AM (7 children)
Citation?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 28 2017, @05:52AM (6 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 28 2017, @06:16AM (4 children)
FTF LISA Page " We need a giant detector bigger than the size of Earth to catch gravitational waves from orbiting black holes hundreds of millions of times more massive than our sun. NASA is a major collaborator in the European Space Agency (ESA)-led mission, which is scheduled to launch in the early 2030s and we are getting ready for it now!"
Sorry sounds like a lot of spin and not in the up down way, we can confirm time dilation locally but we don't actually know that black holes actually exist all of this is conjecture and given recent dark energy thinking err, cosmology is actually a lot of unconfermable because we say so and trust us because we have other people saying you should trust us, it might be true but without some method to actually test it is still string theory level.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by FatPhil on Thursday September 28 2017, @06:45AM (3 children)
We have things that look like black holes, we can see their action - there's something definitely black-hole-like out there, we have a mechanism by which black holes can form, and which models their post-formation behaviour, which matches what we can observe. Later observations (such as these LIGO ones) agree with every prediction that has been made about black hole behaviour, and note that I am emphasising that the science is not just descriptive, but predictive.
We have duck theory, we see things that are shaped like theoretical ducks, they waddle like theoretical ducks, and now they quack like theoretical ducks. A claim that they don't exist is now the extreme one, which requires extremely good evidence to support.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 28 2017, @08:58AM (2 children)
Funnily, the size of the observable universe and the mass within it make the observable universe smaller than its Schwarzschild Radius.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_radius#Parameters [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 28 2017, @12:47PM
No, the observable universe [wikipedia.org] is a sphere around Earth with a radius of 46 billion light years. Even the age of the universe is estimated to be 13.799 billion years, which is more than the number of light years for the listed Schwarzschild Radius.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday September 29 2017, @08:05AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 28 2017, @02:46PM
Wonder how much more accurate a three detector system would be if one of them was - ohhhh - planted on the moon, instead of Earth. Or, Mars. Triangulation gets more accurate when you lengthen your hypotenuse, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 28 2017, @05:50AM
Not until at least Autumn 2018 [arstechnica.com], since LIGO was shut down for maintenance and upgrades. Multiple other facilities are in development [wikipedia.org].