New equipment will help scientists detect gravity waves

There are waves that wash across the universe but they have nothing to do with water. They are generated by massive star explosions and scientists are desperate to detect them.

The waves are actually distortions in the fabric of space itself, ripples kicked off by stars in their death throes and by black holes, the biggest gravity sources in the universe. But the “gravity waves” are notoriously difficult to detect giventhey are so very weak by the time they reach us, like waves washing up onto the beach.

Professors Andreas Freise and Alberto Vecchio of the University of Birmingham ’s school of physics and astronomy are participants in an international effort to build detectors capable of directly detecting these waves. They provided an update on the project during a session on the closing day today of the Festival of Science in Birmingham.

The great physicist Albert Einstein predicted that large gravitational objects would distort spacetime and kick off gravity waves but none have been detected directly so far.

This should change given "Advanced Ligo", a collaboration that followed the earlier "Ligo" project. New equipment is being installed at Ligo sites including the US and Europe that will greatly improve their sensitivity.

This is no small thing given the goal is to be able to watch as the spacetime that surrounds us distorts ever so slightly by one thousandth of the width of the centre of a hydrogen atom.

This tiny measurement is achieved using lasers and mirrors, with light beams that travel down two perpendicular arms of the experiment, each four kilometres long.

Work continues to prepare the Ligo experiment for its switch-on, with the goal being to capture evidence of the gravity waves as they pass through three different Ligo sites. The waves travel at light speed and so there will be a tiny time variation as they pass each site.

Just like GPS they will be able to triangulate where the waves came from originally allowing astronomers to learn what caused them in the first case.