Fourth gravitational wave is detected!

On September 27, 2017 a press conference presented at 18.30 (Paris time), in France for the international media. The story that was shared for press will opens a new era for gravitational wave science. A fourth gravitational wave has been detected -- this time with help from Italy-based equipment. Two black holes collided, sending ripples through the fabric of space and time, researchers said Wednesday. The latest space-time ripples were detected on August 14 at 10:30 GMT when two giant black holes with masses about 31 and 25 times the mass of the Sun merged about 1.8 billion light-years away. "The newly produced spinning black hole has about 53 times the mass of our Sun," said a statement from the international scientists at Virgo detector, located at the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO) in Cascina, near Pisa, Italy. The Virgo detector is an underground instrument that tracks gravitational waves, using the physics of laser light and space. Known as interferometers, these high-tech underground stations do not rely on light in the sky like a telescope does, but instead sense vibrations in space and can pick up the "chirp" created by a gravitational wave. "It is wonderful to see a first gravitational-wave signal in our brand new Advanced Virgo detector only two weeks after it officially started taking data," said Virgo spokesman Jo van den Brand of Nikhef and Vrije Universiteit (VU) University Amsterdam. The space-time ripple was picked up by all three detectors at nearly the same time. Previously, gravitational waves have been found using two US-based detectors, which are the most sophisticated in the world -- known as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington. "This is just the beginning of observations with the network enabled by Virgo and LIGO working together," said David Shoemaker, MIT's spokesman for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. "With the next observing run planned for Fall 2018 we can expect such detections weekly or even more often", reported the scientists.