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    LIGO tagged posts

    Surprising optics breakthrough could transform our view of the Universe

    December 5, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A Powerful Leap in Gravitational-Wave Tech
    A high-precision thermal wavefront system called FROSTI allows LIGO and future detectors to operate at megawatt-scale laser power without degrading signal quality. This breakthrough will greatly expand our ability to detect black hole and neutron star mergers across the universe. Credit: Shutterstock

    FROSTI revolutionizes mirror control in gravitational-wave detectors, opening the door to a far deeper view of the cosmos. FROSTI is a new adaptive optics system that precisely corrects distortions in LIGO’s mirrors caused by extreme laser power. By using custom thermal patterns, it preserves mirror shape without introducing noise, allowing detectors to operate at higher sensitivities. This leap enables future observatories like Cosmic Explorer to see deeper into the cosmos...

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    Scientists discover new evidence of intermediate-mass black holes

    June 2, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Scientists discover new evidence of intermediate-mass black holes
    Left: posterior distribution of the chirp mass of the binary in the source frame as a function of the inferred effective inspiral spin parameter. Right: posterior distributions of the mass and the dimensionless spin of the remnant black hole according to the RIFT inference using the NRSur7dq4 model. The two-dimensional plot for both panels shows the 90% credible regions of inference using RIFT with the NRSur7dq4 model. The thick grey and filled black posteriors represent the LVK posterior distributions for GW170502 and GW190521, respectively, with the NRSur7dq4 waveform model. Credit: The Astrophysical Journal Letters (2025). DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/adc5f8

    A series of studies sheds light on the origins and characteristics of intermediate-mass black holes...

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    Detecting the primordial black holes that could be today’s dark matter

    May 26, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Detecting the primordial black holes that could be today's dark matter

    Besides particles like sterile neutrinos, axions and weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), a leading candidate for the cold dark matter of the universe are primordial black holes—black holes created from extremely dense conglomerations of subatomic particles in the first seconds after the Big Bang.

    Primordial black holes (PBHs) are classically stable, but as shown by Stephen Hawking in 1975, they can evaporate via quantum effects, radiating nearly like a blackbody. Thus, they have a lifetime; it’s proportional to the cube of their initial mass. As it’s been 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang, only PBHs with an initial mass of a trillion kilograms or more should have survived to today.

    However, it has been suggested that the lifetime of a black hole might be consider...

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    Finding New Physics in Debris from Colliding Neutron Stars

    March 10, 2024, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Artist’s illustration of two merging neutron stars. (Image: National Science Foundation/LIGO/Sonoma State University/A. Simonnet)

    Neutron star mergers are a treasure trove for new physics signals, with implications for determining the true nature of dark matter, according to research from Washington University in St. Louis.

    On Aug. 17, 2017, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), in the United States, and Virgo, a detector in Italy, detected gravitational waves from the collision of two neutron stars. For the first time, this astronomical event was not only heard in gravitational waves but also seen in light by dozens of telescopes on the ground and in space.

    Physicist Bhupal Dev in Arts & Sciences used observations from this neutron star merger — an ev...

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