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LIGO Receives New Funding to Search for More Extreme Cosmic Events

News Release • February 14, 2019

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awards Caltech and MIT $20.4 million to upgrade LIGO.

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LIGO and Virgo Announce Four New Gravitational-Wave Detections

News Release • December 3, 2018

The National Science Foundation's LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) and the European-based VIRGO gravitational-wave detector have published new results from the first two Observing runs. Four new black hole mergers are newly announced, The LIGO and Virgo collaborations have now confidently detected gravitational waves from a total of 10 stellar-mass binary black hole mergers and one merger of neutron stars, which are the dense, spherical remains of stellar explosions.

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Winners of the 2018 Award for Excellence in Detector Characterization and Calibration Are Announced

News Release • November 20, 2018

Winners of the 2018 Award for Excellence in Detector Characterization and Calibration are announced.

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LIGO Scientists Awarded New Horizons in Physics Prize

News Release • October 17, 2018

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LIGO Prepares for Third Observing Run

News Release • September 21, 2018

Staff at LIGO Hanford and Livingston are hard at work finishing critical upgrades and preparing for the start of LIGO's third observing run, O3, scheduled to begin sometime early 2019.

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LIGO Laboratory Announces The Award for Excellence in Detector Characterization and Calibration

News Release • September 14, 2018

LIGO Laboratory announces The LIGO Lab Award for Excellence in Detector Characterization and Calibration

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Jocelyn Bell Burnell Receives Breakthrough Prize

News Release • September 10, 2018

The LIGO Lab and LIGO Scientific Collaboration congratulate Jocelyn Bell Burnell for receiving the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

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C.E.K. Mees Medal awarded to Stanley Whitcomb

News Release • August 20, 2018

LIGO’s Stanley Whitcomb recently received 2018 C.E.K. Mees Medal from the Optical Society.  Whitcomb is being recognized for his pioneering, diverse interdisciplinary contributions to the LIGO gravitational wave detectors.  The award recognizes “an original use of optics across multiple fields.” 

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LIGO Celebrates One-Year Anniversary of Historic Binary Neutron Star Merger Detection

News Release • August 17, 2018

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LIGO Congratulates IceCube on Multimessenger Astronomy Success

News Release • July 16, 2018

The LIGO Laboratory congratulates the IceCube neutrino observatory team on its recent multimessenger astronomy success!

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LIGO Designated APS Historic Site

News Release • June 15, 2018

On June 20th, LIGO's two detector sites will be designated historic sites by the American Physical Society. The two observatories - one in Livingston, Louisiana and one in Hanford, Washington - will receive plaques recognizing the historic nature of the first direct detection of gravitational waves.

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New Video: LIGO: A Discovery that Shook the World

News Release • February 22, 2018

The National Science Foundation funded Advanced LIGO Documentary Project released a new video looking at information coming from first multi-messenger detection of colliding neutron stars. On August 8, 2017, LIGO joined forces with Virgo and over 70 astronomical observatories to look at a neutron star merger through gravitational waves and electromagnetic waves (light). This video explores the significance of that event.

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New Ron Drever Gravitational Wave Scholarship Announced

News Release • January 2, 2018

The family of a pioneering Scottish physicist has donated a substantial portion of his estate to support a postgraduate research scholarship at the University of Glasgow.

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Physics World 2017 Breakthrough of the Year Award

News Release • December 11, 2017

Physics World announced that the first multi-messenger detection of a neutron star merger was 2017's breakthrough of the year. LIGO was one of over 50 collaborations involved with this breakthrough.

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Nobel Prize Week

News Release • December 6, 2017

LIGO Founders Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish will be awarded the Nobel prize this week in Stockholm, Sweden. On Friday, Dec. 8th they will deliver their Nobel lectures. On Sunday, Dec. 10th they will receive their medals as part of the Nobel award ceremony.

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Adalberto Giazotto, 1940-2017

News Release • November 20, 2017

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LIGO and Virgo announce the detection of a black hole binary merger from June 8, 2017

News Release • November 15, 2017

Scientists searching for gravitational waves have confirmed yet another detection from their fruitful observing run earlier this year. Dubbed GW170608, the latest discovery was produced by the merger of two relatively light black holes, 7 and 12 times the mass of the sun, at a distance of about a thousand million light-years from Earth. The merger left behind a final black hole 18 times the mass of the sun, meaning that energy equivalent to about 1 solar mass was emitted as gravitational waves during the collision.

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LIGO Detection of Colliding Neutron Stars Spawns Global Effort to Study the Rare Event

News Release • October 16, 2017

LIGO’s detection on August 17, 2017 of gravitational waves from merging neutron stars has spawned an explosion of new science across the global astronomical community. This detection is especially important to science because the waves were created by matter and not black holes. As such, a deluge of electromagnetic radiation was also produced in the process; something not associated with any of LIGO’s previous detections. Behind the scenes of this amazing discovery.

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Nobel Prize awarded to LIGO Founders

News Release • October 3, 2017

LIGO co-founders Barry C. Barish, Kip S. Thorne, and Rainer Weiss win the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics.

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Gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger observed by LIGO and Virgo

News Release • September 27, 2017

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo collaboration report the first joint detection of gravitational waves with both the LIGO and Virgo detectors. This is the fourth announced detection of a binary black hole system and the first significant gravitational-wave signal recorded by the Virgo detector, and highlights the scientific potential of a three-detector network of gravitational-wave detectors.

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LIGO Founders receive Fudan-Zongzhi Science Award

News Release • September 25, 2017

Three LIGO founders were awarded the Fudan-Zongzhi Science Award.

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LIGO's 2nd Observation Run Finishes

News Release • August 25, 2017

A very exciting LIGO-Virgo Second Observing run is drawing to a close August 25.

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New Video: The New Age of Gravitational Wave Astronomy

News Release • August 11, 2017

The Advanced LIGO Documentary project released the 2nd video in an 8 part series looking at LIGO's historic discovery of gravitational waves, and the birth of the new age of gravitational wave astronomy.

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VIRGO Joins LIGO

News Release • August 1, 2017

VIRGO joins LIGO, as a third gravitational wave detector enabling the detectors to better localize where gravitational waves emanate from.

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LIGO Awarded Berkeley Prize from American Astronomical Society

News Release • July 27, 2017

LIGO's Dennis Coyne, Peter Fritschel and David Shoemaker were awarded the Lancelot M. Berkeley New York Community Trust Prize for Meritorious Work in Astronomy in recognition of their "groundbreaking" work with LIGO. This award comes from the American Astronomical Society whose mission is to enhance and share humanity's scientific understanding of the universe.