Direct detection of gravitational waves (GW150914)
Detección directa de ondas gravitacionales (GW150914)
- Date
- 2015 (anunciado en 2016) · confidence high
- Place
- LIGO Hanford, Washington / LIGO Livingston, Louisiana, United States
- Credited to
- LIGO-Virgo Collaboration; Rainer Weiss; Kip Thorne; Barry Barish
- People
- 👤 Barry C. Barish1936–👤 Kip S. Thorne1940–👤 Rainer Weiss1932–2025
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
On 14 September 2015 the two LIGO interferometers record the deformation of space-time (one part in 10^21) caused by the merger of two black holes 1.3 billion light-years away. It confirms Einstein's 1916 prediction and opens up a new astronomy.
2017 Nobel Prize for Weiss, Thorne and Barish. Coordinate with astronomy for GW170817 (2017). Merged with 'First direct detection of gravitational waves (GW150914)' (duplicate, 23-09-2026).
What it led to
- Gravitational-wave astronomy (over 300 detections by 2026)
- Multi-messenger astronomy (neutron-star merger GW170817 and the origin of gold)
- Tests of relativity in the strong-field regime
- Future detectors (LISA, Einstein Telescope, Cosmic Explorer)
- Gravitational-wave astronomy
- Population of binary black holes
- LISA and Einstein Telescope
Built on
- Michelson interferometer1881
- General relativity1915
- Cygnus X-1, first stellar black hole candidate1971-1972
- Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar1974-1979
- Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar (1974, indirect evidence)
- Stabilised lasers and precision optics
Made possible
- GW170817 neutron star merger and kilonova2017
- Gravitational-wave background from pulsar timing arrays2023
- Kilometre-scale interferometers with squeezed light
- Detection of the gravitational-wave background via pulsars (2023)
- Extreme-precision laser interferometry