- #1
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- TL;DR Summary
- LIGO and Virgo saw what looks like a very short gravitational event of unknown origin.
Not much is known so far. This is the notification from LIGO/Virgo and here is some raw data. Things I gathered from other sources (Twitter 1, Twitter 2, Reddit, ...):
It was a very short burst seen by all three detectors, with a false alarm rate of 1 per 25 years - a good chance this is something real. The burst was 14 milliseconds long and the fitted central frequency is 65 Hz, which means they had just about a single cycle in the signal. Most likely it won't look like a sine wave, it will probably look like a short peak, maybe two peaks in opposite directions (depending on how they define the duration), and then potentially some smaller oscillations afterwards. It was triggered by a system looking for intermediate mass black holes (heavier than stars but lighter than galactic black holes) but it is unclear if one of these was involved. It came roughly from the direction of Betelgeuse but the star is still there - telescopes are searching through the area to see if there is something new. Here is a map where people have looked.
Expect more updates in the following days.
It was a very short burst seen by all three detectors, with a false alarm rate of 1 per 25 years - a good chance this is something real. The burst was 14 milliseconds long and the fitted central frequency is 65 Hz, which means they had just about a single cycle in the signal. Most likely it won't look like a sine wave, it will probably look like a short peak, maybe two peaks in opposite directions (depending on how they define the duration), and then potentially some smaller oscillations afterwards. It was triggered by a system looking for intermediate mass black holes (heavier than stars but lighter than galactic black holes) but it is unclear if one of these was involved. It came roughly from the direction of Betelgeuse but the star is still there - telescopes are searching through the area to see if there is something new. Here is a map where people have looked.
Expect more updates in the following days.
