The Virgo collaboration participates in the International Year of Light

No doubt that 2015 will be a bright year! It is of course the International Year of Light but it will also mark the first light for the gravitational wave detector Advanced Virgo based near Pisa in Italy. Advanced Virgo aims to detect the most violent events in the universe by measuring on Earth extremely small ripples in the fabric of space time itself. The detector is a giant Michelson interferometer made of two perpendicular 3-km long arms spreading along the Tuscan countryside.