Experiments simultaneously detect gravitational waves – and help open up a new era of astronomy

Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health Get our free Health Check email Get our free Health Check email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. It’s actually hugely important, because it provides the first corroboration of direct detection of gravitational waves by scientists outside the Ligo collaboration. We also expect to soon be able to detect gravitational waves from sources other than black holes – and that could make it much easier to do multi-messenger astronomy. Equally significantly, this event is a tribute to the collaboration of Ligo and Virgo, which could have been bitter rivals in a race to detect gravitational waves, but instead have become close collaborators in a joint venture to understand our universe. This collaboration extends further towards future gravitational wave detectors in Japan and India – and out to many astronomy groups working on observing sources that Ligo detects.