Advanced LIGO detectors inaugurated

Advanced Ligo gravitational wave hunt is green lit
20 May 2015

One of the great physics experiments of our age looks ready to begin its quest.
Scientists have held a dedication ceremony to inaugurate the Advanced Ligo facilities in the US.
This pair of widely separated laboratories will be hunting for gravitational waves...

Tuesday's dedication ceremony at the Hanford lab in the US northwest paves the way for the experiment to begin its search in earnest towards the end of the year...

Researchers have spent the past eight years, and more than $200m, upgrading equipment at both facilities to a new level of sensitivity...

When Ligo was first established, it was capable of measuring disturbances in the set-up equivalent to one one-thousandth of the width of a proton, one of the particles that make up all atoms.
The improvements installed in the last few years should make Advanced Ligo 10 times more sensitive.
"We have a standard measure to track the improving performance of the detectors as they are commissioned, and in round numbers both detectors are now operating with a range close to 200 million light-years. So, a truly phenomenal distance, and within that volume there are very many galaxies, and if an event takes place in one of those galaxies when the detectors are online - which they will be increasingly towards the end of the year - it should be seen," explained Ken Strain, deputy director of the Institute for Gravitational Research at the University of Glasgow and principal investigator of the Advanced Ligo project team in the UK.
Further refinements would increase the sensitivity by a factor of three by 2020, Prof Strain told BBC News...