LIGO may soon be able to detect murmurs from distant black hole collisions
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.029712
Science News : When researchers at the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced that they’d found the first direct evidence of gravitational waves from the collision of two black holes, the source of the signal was calculated to be roughly 1.4 billion light-years away. There was no mistaking the characteristic signal because of how clearly it stood out from the background noise. Now the LIGO team members say that they may be able to tease out evidence of much more distant collisions from those background fluctuations. The researchers hope to compare the background data recorded by the two LIGO detectors and identify matching patterns. Because black hole mergers seem to occur more frequently than previously thought, LIGO could be able to detect as many as 2000 mergers per year.
