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[collision] Welcome to LIGO Hanford Observatory, located in the Columbia Basin region of southeastern Washington. LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, seeks to detect gravitational waves -- ripples in the fabric of spacetime. First predicted by Einstein in his theory of general relativity, gravitational waves are produced by exotic events involving black holes, neutron stars and objects perhaps not yet discovered. Use our links to explore LIGO science, public outreach and educational resources.
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[itmy_hang] Advanced LIGO passed a significant milestone late in September 2011 when an international team successfully suspended a 40-kilogram mirror from four thin glass fibers in a quadruple suspension at LIGO Hanford. This is the first of twelve monolithic suspensions that LIGO must assemble for the advanced detectors. Glass fiber suspensions represent a key advanced detector technology. Their implementation will decrease thermal noise on the mirrors, one of the fundamental noise sources that limits detector sensivity. The GEO600 detector has utilized glass suspensions for years, and the Virgo detector followed suit for its most recent data run. In LIGO, monolithic suspensions will join with improved vibration isolation and higher laser power to decrease the detectors' noise floor from one end of the gravitational wave detection band to the other, a range of 10 Hz to 8 KHz. View the photos . . .

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•Last modified Nov 10, 2011
•White dwarf image courtesy of JAXA
•"Colliding Black Holes" courtesy of Werner Benger, Zuse Institute Berlin, Max-Planck Institutue fuer Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) and the Center for Computation & Technology at Louisiana State University.
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LIGO is supported by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation