The EU funded project GraWIToN contributes to the new era for gravitational wave science

Following the previous observations of gravitational waves, yesterday it was announced that a fourth gravitational-wave signal located about 1.8 billion light-years away was detected on the 14th of August 2017, at 10:30:43 UTC.

LIGO-Virgo GW170814 Skymap)

Illustration Credit: Virgo-LIGO Collaboration - Optical Sky Data: A. Mellinger

The merger of two black holes with masses about 31 and 35 solar masses forming a black hole of 53 solar masses emitted the gravitational wave (ripples in space and time) called GW170814.

The significance of the observation of GW170814 is that it is the first event that was observed by the global 3-detector network, the two twin Advanced LIGO (located in the USA) detectors and the Advanced Virgo (located in Italy), supported by the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO).

Due to 3-detector network, it was possible to better localise the source in the sky and to test of Einstein's theory of general relativity. This observation shows both the potential of multimessenger astronomy and the global collaborations which are now necessary to make possible great discoveries.

Additional results, based on data from the three-detector network, will be announced in the near future by the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration; the analysis of the data is currently being finalized.

The discovery, accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters (the journal article draft is available for download at these links: https://dcc.ligo.org/P170814 and https://tds.virgo-gw.eu/GW170814; it will appear tomorrow on arXiv) was made by the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration.

11 researchers from the Initial Training Network GraWIToN project, funded under the FP7 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, directly contributed to this scientific achievement announced yesterday that demonstrates the possibility to localize a gravitational wave sources through a network of detectors.

The EU-funded GraWIToN recruited young researchers in institutions in France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. These researchers were involved in data analysis and technological developments both in Virgo and LIGO detectors.

GraWIToN http://www.grawiton-gw.eu/

GW170814 interactive skymap http://www.virgo-gw.eu/skymap.html

Astronomy image of the Day from NASA https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

GW170814 Press Kit http://www.virgo-gw.eu/docs/GW170814/

"EU-backed researchers prove Einstein right on gravitational waves" https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/worldwide/asean/eu-backed-researchers-prove-einstein-right-gravitational-waves

"Gravitational waves detected, scientists announce" https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/gravitational-waves-detected-scientists-announce_en.html