Virgo

When LIGO and Virgo detected the echoes that likely came from a collision between a black hole and a neutron star, dozens of physicists began a hunt for the signal’s electromagnetic counterpart.

Scientists think that, under some circumstances, dark matter could generate powerful enough gravitational waves for equipment like LIGO to detect. Now that observatories have begun to record gravitational waves on a regular basis, scientists are discussing how dark matter—only known so far to interact with other matter only through gravity—might create these gravitational waves.

A year after detecting a neutron star collision, scientists are excited for the future of multimessenger astronomy and astrophysics.

From WTTW’s Chicago Tonight, Oct. 17, 2017: Fermilab’s James Annis is among the panel of scientists who discuss the LIGO/Virgo’s detection of gravitational waves from colliding neutron stars and the optical followup.

From The New York Times, Oct. 16, 2017: This is the first time LIGO has discovered anything that regular astronomers could see and study. One of the group of astronomers who spotted the speck of light was led by Marcelle Soares-Santos of Brandeis University and using the Dark Energy Camera.

For the first time, experiments have seen both light and gravitational waves released by a single celestial crash.

A team of scientists using the Dark Energy Camera was among the first to observe the fiery aftermath of a recently detected burst of gravitational waves, recording images of the first confirmed explosion from two colliding neutron stars ever seen by astronomers.