Research report 2016 - Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Hanover)
The discovery of the first gravitational-wave signal
Authors
Drago, Marco; Lundgren, Andrew
Departments
„Beobachtungsbasierte Relativität und Kosmologie“
Summary
On 14 September 2015, the Advanced LIGO instruments detected gravitational waves for the first time ever. The signal came from the merger of two black holes, each with the mass of about 30 Suns, in a distance of 1.3 billion light-years to Earth. Albert Einstein had predicted the existence of these ripples in spacetime in 1916. The first hours of this discovery of the century took place at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hannover in Bruce Allen's “Observational Relativity and Cosmology” division. The authors were also the first persons to see the signal.