I was on a site visit this week to the LIGO site in Hanford, Washington, which looks for gravitational waves!
LIGO works by shooting a laser down two 4km long tubes and looking for slight wiggles from black holes or neutron stars merging in space. This is as insane as it sounds! (There’s another site in Louisiana too to make sure they know which signals aren’t local interference from a guy driving a truck or similar.)
Pic 3 is control room, 4 shows some of the noise they track, like from the sloshing of water in the oceans- turns out that’s a micron or so of noise at any time! 5 is one of the schematics, 6 is a cutout of what one of these tubes look like inside (long w a smaller vacuum tube inside for the laser- better detail of that in the next pic). Final pic is of the second arm of this LIGO site, a 90deg angle from the first one.
For those not used to the American West, see the bunch of stuff piled up on the tunnel in the first pic? That's the LIGO tumbleweed collection!
Also, it should be noted that LIGO is currently going to be shut down per the current budget request. Please contact your Congressional reps and tell them to support science- it’s not too late to change this!
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1lc3ltp
10 Comments
Thanks for the look inside. LIGO’s work looks like it could change how we understand the universe.
I was in the Hanford in 2016 for work. On a whim I stopped by LIGO. They actually let me into the facility grounds to walk around a bit and take some pictures, but no tours or inside buildings because they didn’t have any personnel to escort me nor any scheduled events that day (it was a random mid week impulse visit anyway).
In 2017 my friends wanted to do a trip to New Orleans so I made sure to fly in a couple of days early and make arrangements with the Livingston staff for a tour of that LIGO campus. Magical.
I now have “visit every laser interferometry site across the globe” on my bucket list.
For some reason I though it would be underground
Guys…come on…don’t shut LIGO. Cut other programs, but LIGO…you leave alone. And keep your distance from NASA. Just give it more money and a wide berth ❤️
Congratulations and thanks for the pics. This is the peak of humanity
I gotta admit.
I am jealous.
Did they tell you about some fun stuff they’re currently observing?
I live near here, and have toured it in high school before they found gravitational waves! Fascinating facility, and I hope we can succeed in keeping it open.
One small note- It isn’t at “Hanford, Washington.” Hanford as a city no longer exists; Hanford as a settlement was depopulated so the US Gov could use it for the Manhattan project. They kept the name, calling it the “Hanford Site.” That is still the name used today. The proper terminology would be “At the Hanford site in Washington.”
It is in Benton County, Washington, and the nearest city is Richland, Washington, which was incorporated in 1910. Richland was acquired by the US Gov in 1943 and heavily added to in a similar war to Los Alamos; A pop up city to house and entertain Hanford Site workers. It was returned to the people in 1958.
Very cool! Thanks for the inside look. Why am I not surprised this administration is proposing to shut it down? 🤦♀️
Neat!
As I understand it, both sides shoot lasers whose beams cancel each other out (destructive interference) and any gravitational waves would knock them out of phase and the photons would then be detected.
Is that about right?
If gravitational waves, is it waving hello or goodbye?