The Virgo Collaboration is an international scientific effort focused on the direct detection of gravitational waves and the development of gravitational-wave astronomy as a tool for understanding the cosmos. The collaboration operates the Virgo interferometer, a large-scale laser interferometer located near Pisa, Italy, designed to detect gravitational waves emitted by cosmic events such as merging black holes and neutron stars. Established in the 1990s, the collaboration includes researchers from numerous European countries and works in close partnership with other observatories around the world, including the U.S.-based LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory). The detection of gravitational waves, first achieved by LIGO in 2015 and subsequently by Virgo, has opened a new window onto the universe, providing insights into phenomena that are invisible in ordinary electromagnetic observations and enabling tests of general relativity under extreme conditions.
A new SISSA study proposes an array of interferometers in space to detect subtle fluctuations in the background gravitational signals that may reveal the secrets…
The finding hints at exotic black hole behaviors. In the last seven years, scientists at the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration (LVC) have detected 90 gravitational wave signals….
The largest catalog of gravitational wave events ever assembled has been released by an international collaboration that includes Penn State researchers. Gravitational waves are ripples…
First Detection of Gravitational Waves From Black Holes Swallowing Neutron Stars For the first time, scientists have picked up the ripples in space-time caused by…
Two gravitational wave signals from an entirely new class of cosmic collisions have been discovered by researchers working on the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo…
Gravitational wave detectors have observed a new type of cataclysmic event in the cosmos: the merger of a neutron star with a black hole. The…
Mix pair is “elusive missing piece of the family picture of compact object mergers.” A long time ago, in two galaxies about 900 million light-years…
Over the past five years, astronomy has been revolutionized as scientists have used ripples in the fabric of spacetime, called gravitational waves, to reveal the…
When two neutron stars slam together, the result is sometimes a black hole that swallows all but the gravitational evidence of the collision. However, in…
Through simulations of a dying star, a team of theoretical physics researchers have found the evolutionary origin and the maximum mass of black holes which…
The most massive black hole collision ever detected has been directly observed by the LIGO and VIRGO Scientific Collaboration, which includes scientists from The Australian National University (ANU). The…
Researchers suggest a novel process to explain the collision of a large black hole and a much smaller one. A lopsided merger of two black…
A binary black hole merger likely produced gravitational waves equal to the energy of eight suns. For all its vast emptiness, the universe is humming…
A black hole around 23 times the size of the Sun has swallowed a mysterious, much smaller astrophysical object, according to new research announced today by the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave observatories,…
For decades astronomers have been puzzled by a gap that lies between neutron stars and black holes, but a major new discovery has found a…
When the most massive stars die, they collapse under their own gravity and leave behind black holes; when stars that are a bit less massive…
Object lies between heaviest known neutron star and lightest known black hole. An international research collaboration, including Northwestern University astronomers, has detected a mystery object…
LIGO and Virgo Find Another Surprising Binary System The harvest of exceptional gravitational-wave events from LIGO’s and Virgo’s third observing run (O3) grows. A new…