Searching for Gravity Waves with Interferometers

A collaboration of physicists from Caltech and MIT has recently produced detailed plans for a pair of large detectors, based on laser interferometry, that they believe should be sensitive enough to detect gravity waves from several types of astrophysical sources. The detectors, which will each consist of an L‐shaped vacuum chamber 4 kilometers long through which laser‐interferometer beams will travel, are tentatively to be located in Columbia, Maine, and at Edwards Air Force Base, California. The projected cost is between $50 and $60 million. If this sum is forthcoming from NSF the detectors could be on the air as early as 1991. According to Ronald Drever (Caltech), who, along with Rainer Weiss (MIT), heads the collaboration, the leap in sensitivity from existing detectors to their planned interferometer is like “going from the human eye to the Mount Palomar telescope.” Successful detection would not only help sort out competing theories of gravity, but open up a new window on violent processes throughout the universe.

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