This plot shows gravitational-wave signals recorded by the LIGO Hanford detector almost ten years apart. The top shows data from LIGO's first-ever detection of gravitational waves, an event called GW150914, captured in 2015. The bottom shows the signal known as GW250114, captured in 2025. Both events involve colliding black holes about 1.3 billion light-years away with masses between 30 to 40 times that of our Sun.

The purple line shows the data, which are a combination of the signal plus background detector noise. The noise comes from a variety of sources, including seismic motions that jiggle giant mirrors inside LIGO. The green line shows the best-fit prediction from general relativity for each signal. The much lower noise seen today is thanks to cutting-edge improvements made to the LIGO detectors that hush unwanted noise.

Image credit: LIGO/J. Tissino (GSSI)/R. Hurt (Caltech-IPAC)