Gravitational Wave Hunters Set to Make Big Announcement Monday

The LIGO detector in Livingston, Louisiana. (Credit: LIGO Collaboration) The massive collaboration of scientists that's hunting gravitational waves—with a lot of success—is set to make another big announcement on Monday. A flurry of press releases this week have teased the news, which is set to break on Oct. 16, although they've been short on details. At 10 a.m. Eastern, a team from the groundbreaking gravitational wave detector LIGO will make an announcement at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. They'll be joined by researchers from Virgo, LIGO's Italian counterpart, and simultaneous briefings are planned in Germany and the United Kingdom. It's likely to be something more exciting another detection — the last was announced on Sept. 27 without nearly as much fanfare. Crucially, though, that detection marked the first time Virgo and the pair of LIGO detectors caught a gravitational wave at the same time, allowing them to roughly ...