The Nobel Prize in Physics 2017 awarded to LIGO collaboration
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics 2017 with one half to
Rainer Weiss, LIGO/VIRGO Collaboration and the other half jointly to
Barry C. Barish, LIGO/VIRGO Collaboration and
Kip S. Thorne, LIGO/VIRGO Collaboration
“for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves”
VIRGO and LIGO together, in quest of gravitational waves
Cascina, 4 August 2017 – On Tuesday August 1st at 10 UCT the LIGO and VIRGO interferometers officially started taking data jointly.
Two perspectives justify the interest of international physics community on this date, the first concerns the conclusion of the construction and the start of operations of the European detector VIRGO, the second is the beginning of the systematic exploration of the Universe with the global network of new generation interferometers.
The European gravitational interferometer VIRGO, on the road again
The dedication ceremony for the second-generation European gravitational interferometer was held on Monday the 20th of February 2017. The ceremony took place at the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO) in Cascina PI, Italy, the site at which Advanced Virgo is located. The ceremony took place in the presence of the presidents of the institutions that have funded the project (INFN, IN2P3, Nikhef) and of representatives of the governments of the six nations whose laboratories are members of the Virgo Collaboration.
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.
