Europeans plan third-generation gravitational wave detector

Nature : Today a team of scientists in Europe released the results of a €3 million ($4.3 million) design study on the Einstein Telescope (ET), writes Eugenie Samuel Reich for Nature. The telescope, scheduled to be constructed around 2025, would represent the third generation of gravitational wave detectors. The first generation includes the US’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), already in operation, and the second includes Advanced LIGO, which will not go online until around 2015. The €1 billion ($1.4 trillion) ET observatory will continue the search for gravitational waves and their sources, thought to include such dramatic astrophysical events as the merger of black holes or neutron stars. Such large ripples in spacetime, which were first predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, have yet to be directly detected. The new telescope, which will be 10 times as sensitive as Advanced LIGO, also offers the potential to probe the earliest moments of the universe just after the Big Bang.