Avery Thompson
The scientists working at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), who made the news last year for becoming the first group to successfully detect gravitational waves, have just made an announcement: They've detected gravitational waves. Again.
The discovery marks the fourth such detection the lab has made, this time in conjunction with the new European gravitational wave observatory, VIRGO. While this particular discovery may not seem remarkable, it reveals an incredible fact: These discoveries are about to become routine.
LIGO was first turned on in 2002, and it spent 15 years trying to detect movement from gravitational waves. These waves are ripples in the fabric of space-time caused when two massive objects, like black holes, collide. The ripples in space-time they produce are impossibly tiny—only a fraction of the width of an atom—making them incredibly difficult to detect.
Since LIGO received an upgrade in 2016, it's been able to detect gravitational waves every few months. And now that the VIRGO observatory is online, making these detections with both observatories working together is even easier. According to a LIGO spokesperson, "With the next observing run planned for Fall 2018 we can expect such detections weekly or even more often."
http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/news/a28429/gravitational-wave-detections-weekly/
