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LIGO

Hey science enthusiasts,
This blog is really important for students of astrophysics.Read it patiently till end.
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is a large-scale physicsexperiment and observatory to detect cosmic gravitational waves and to develop gravitational-wave observations as an astronomical tool.[1] Two large observatories were built in the United States with the aim of detecting gravitational waves by laserinterferometry. These can detect a change in the 4 km mirror spacing of less than a ten-thousandth the charge diameter of a proton.[2]The initial LIGO observatories were funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and were conceived, built and are operated by Caltech and MIT.[3][4] They collected data from 2002 to 2010 but no gravitational waves were detected.
The Advanced LIGO Project to enhance the original LIGO detectors began in 2008 and continues to be supported by the NSF, with important contributions from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council, the Max Planck Society of Germany, and the Australian Research Council.[5][6] The improved detectors began operation in 2015. The detection of gravitational waves was reported in 2016 by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) and the Virgo Collaboration with the international participation of scientists from several universities and research institutions. Scientists involved in the project and the analysis of the data for gravitational-wave astronomy are organized by the LSC, which includes more than 1000 scientists worldwide,[7][8][9] as well as 440,000 active Einstein@Home users as of December 2016.[10]The LIGO concept built upon early work by many scientists to test a component of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, the existence of gravitational waves. Starting in the 1960s, American scientists including Joseph Weber, as well as Soviet scientists Mikhail Gertsenshtein and Vladislav Pustovoit, conceived of basic ideas and prototypes of laser interferometry,[16][17] and in 1967 Rainer Weiss of MIT published an analysis of interferometer use and initiated the construction of a prototype with military funding, but it was terminated before it could become operational.[18] Starting in 1968, Kip Thorne initiated theoretical efforts on gravitational waves and their sources at Caltech, and was convinced that gravitational wave detection would eventually succeed.[16On 11 February 2016, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaborationpublished a paper about the detection of gravitational waves, from a signal detected at 09.51 UTC on 14 September 2015 of two ~30 solar mass black holes merging about 1.3 billion light-years from Earth.For more information visit Wikipedia.This content has been taken completely from wikipedia.
For layman I just want to tell that LIGO Is a setup for detecting gravitational waves created by huge celestial bodies during collision or being converted to black whole by using interference of laser light on a screen.The pattern obtained is then used to understand the impact and required calculations are made.In India by 2025 we will also have this set up(as per information from sources).
Thanks....

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