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Gravitational Waves
LIGO & other (GW) observatories

Most of us have by now heard of gravitational waves as predicted by Einstein.
- Note: "Gravity Wave" is a very different topic
In 2017, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Rai Weiss, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish, "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector ...

Unfortunately, this web page is quite U.S. centric. The (in alphabetical order) British, Germans, Italians, Japanese, and others have made significant contributions and (currently) smaller excellent interferometers which help technical development for all.

About current activity from the web sites of the various gravitational wave ( GW ) centers. ( O3 - starting April 1 2019)
Various web sites GEO-600, KAGRA, LIGO, Virgo, - and Wikipedia article and Twitter posting
Information is available in the LIGO magazine. The URL is https://ligo.org/magazine/LIGO-magazine-issueNN.pdf where the NN is the issue number.
- For easier access you can click on the following issue numbers: 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, (the following ?future? issues are not available as of July 1,2021) 19, 20
The latest KAGRA information.

Gravitational Waves

as of July 12, 2021

LIGO and other Gravitational Wave observatories (using GOOGLE Maps)

LIGO, Livingston, LA

LIGO, Hanford, Wash

VIRGO, Pisa, Italy

GEO-600, Hanover, Gr

TAMA300, Tokyo, Japan

KAGRA, under Mount Ikeno
Kamioka, Japan

Gravitational Waves for a General Audience

Gravitational Waves for a more technical audience


LIGO


Notes from Ray Weiss's lecture
  1. this is just like the Heisenberg microscope that you learned about in quantum mechanics, but not with an electron, but with a 40 Kg Test Mass.