GEO600 starts continuous search for Gravitational Waves
Sensitivity vastly improved
The joint German-British Gravitational Wave Detector GEO600 has now entered an 18-month run of continuous measurement. Researchers are optimistic that they will be able to observe a never before seen phenomena the Gravitational Wave which is one of the great untested predictions of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Gravitational Waves can be used to do "ark astronomy", studying those aspects of the Universe for which ordinary astronomy using light (and the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum) can provide limited information.
"If there is a supernova in our vicinity during the next couple of months, our chances of detecting and measuring the resulting gravitational waves are good. The first step towards gravitational wave astronomy has been taken, at last allowing us to observe the 96% of our universe which have been hidden to us up to now" says Prof. Dr. Karsten Danzmann, head of the International Centre for Gravitational Physics which is jointly run by the Max Planck Society and the University of Hannover. Data is taken in conjunction with the two US LIGO observatories.
The sensitivity of the GEO600 detector has been continuously improved since the start of test runs in 2002. "We could only reach out towards a small fraction of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, in those days. Today our sensitivity has increased by a factor of 3000 and we can detect events in distances many times greater than the distance between us and our galactic neighbour, the Andromeda Galaxy" Karsten Danzmann explains.
