Astronomy Picture of the Day: The LIGO telescope breaks the quantum limit

 

Thanks to the new method, the telescope will be able to detect 60% more gravitational waves. The gravitational wave machine measures extremely small distortions in space-time, up to 10 million quadrillion widths across the width of a human hair. These values ​​are so low that even interference from the appearance and disappearance of particles is noticeable. Today, the LIGO facility has overcome this quantum limit by “compressing” laser light. When very massive objects such as black holes collide, enormous energy is released and can cause waves in the very fabric of space-time. These waves, called gravitational waves, were predicted by Albert Einstein more than a century ago, but it was not until 2015 that scientists were able to directly detect them for the first time.

Read more: https://www.mesonstars.com/space/this-is-a-breakthrough-the-ligo-telescope-breaks-the-quantum-limit/