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LIGO Scientific Collaboration
@ligo.org
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Official account of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. We detect gravitational waves!

Email: questions@ligo.org
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ligo.org
Our next webinar will introduce our latest #GWTC4 release and the associated data (papers arxiv.org/abs/2508.18080 and arxiv.org/abs/2508.18079)

Tomorrow at 15:00 UTC, with the recording on YouTube after

Free registration wisconsin-edu.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

☄️🔭
GWTC-4.0 Introduction & Open Data Webinar 13 November 2025 Webinar live from 15:00 UTC
November 12, 2025 at 11:09 AM
ligo.org
Our #GW241011 and #GW241110 discovery paper is now on the arXiv

arxiv.org/abs/2510.26931

If you would like to catch up on the highlights, checkout out our Science Summary

ligo.org/science-summ...

🔭☄️⚛️🧪
Screenshot of the arXiv page GW241011 and GW241110: Exploring Binary Formation and Fundamental Physics with Asymmetric, High-Spin Black Hole Coalescence We report the observation of gravitational waves from two binary black hole coalescences during the fourth observing run of the LIGO--Virgo--KAGRA detector network, GW241011 and GW241110. The sources of these two signals are characterized by rapid and precisely measured primary spins, non-negligible spin--orbit misalignment, and unequal mass ratios between their constituent black holes. These properties are characteristic of binaries in which the more massive object was itself formed from a previous binary black hole merger, and suggest that the sources of GW241011 and GW241110 may have formed in dense stellar environments in which repeated mergers can take place. As the third loudest gravitational-wave event published to date, with a median network signal-to-noise ratio of 36.0, GW241011 furthermore yields stringent constraints on the Kerr nature of black holes, the multipolar structure of gravitational-wave generation, and the existence of ultralight bosons within the mass range 10−13--10−12 eV. arXiv:2510.26931 [astro-ph.HE]
November 4, 2025 at 4:34 PM
ligo.org
Data for #GW241011 and #GW241110 are available to analyze from the Gravitaitonal Wave Open Science Center

doi.org/10.7935/3drz...
doi.org/10.7935/46xh...

You can find lots of tutorials there too!

gwosc.org/tutorials/

#OpenScience #OpenData 🧪🔭☄️⚛️
The gravitational wave signals: the amplitude of the data over time in a combination of the LIGO Hanford, LIGO Livingston and Virgo detectors for GW241011 (left; Hanford and Virgo) and GW241110 (right; Hanford and Livingston). The merger time of the events is at time = 0.
November 1, 2025 at 11:09 AM
ligo.org
Our new paper on our LIGO @egovirgo.bsky.social KAGRA discovery of #GW241011 and #GW241110 is now published

doi.org/10.3847/2041...

These observations can tell us about the astrophysics of binary formation and test fundamental physics

#O4IsHere #GW10Years
Plots showing how the new detection compare to our previous observations. The top panel shows all the events from the LVK’s most recently published catalog, GWTC-4.0, and our two new events GW241011 and GW241110 ordered by the primary spin projected in the direction of the spin of the orbital plane — in other words, how aligned the primary black hole’s spin direction is with the binary system’s orbit direction. Values greater than zero means the black hole is aligned with the spin of the orbit, whereas less than zero means the system is anti-aligned. The bottom panel shows the distribution of primary mass (the mass of the larger black hole) in solar masses and the mass ratio of the black hole pair for all events from GWTC-4.0 including our new events.
October 29, 2025 at 2:42 PM
ligo.org
We are pleased to announce our discovery of #GW241011 and #GW241110

Both come from binary black holes where one black hole is much larger than the other. The larger black holes have large spin. Could these black holes have formed in a previous merger?

ligo.org/science-summ...

#O4IsHere 🔭🧪⚛️☄️
Infographic about GW241011 and GW241110 GW241011's source contained black holes about 13 and 8 times the mass of our Sun. The spin of the bigger black hole is high and bear aligned with the orbit. GW241110's source contained black holes about 17 and 8 times the mass of our Sun. The spin of the larger black hole is high and near anti-aligned with the orbit. Credit: Shanika Galaudage/Northwestern University/Adler Planetarium
October 29, 2025 at 1:58 PM
ligo.org
Count down the top 10 breakthroughs in the 10 years since our first detection with @space.com. Do you agree with their picks?

www.space.com/astronomy/li... by @robleascijorno.bsky.social

#GW10Years 🔭 ⚛️ 🧪
Screenshot: 1. Proving Einstein right! The first gravitational wave detection. On Sept. 14, 2015, ripples in space-time washed over Earth that were generated by the merger of two black holes, each with a mass of around 30 times that of the sun. This signal, which would come to be known as GW150914 (GW for "gravitational wave" and the following numbers for the date of measurement), had been traveling to our planet for 1.4 billion years. GW150914's arrival and detection confirmed a theory that was first proposed a century earlier by arguably history's most famous physicist, Albert Einstein, in his 1915 theory of gravity, general relativity. Screenshot: 10. Proving Einstein ... wrong!?! The LIGO project operates two detector sites: one near Hanford in eastern Washington, and another near Livingston, Louisiana (shown here). The observatory has four kilometre arms, long concrete tubes surrounded by the greenery of Louisiana. The central building shines white in the middle of the picture. There is LIGO's Science Education Center there is you would like to visit.
September 29, 2025 at 10:06 AM
ligo.org
Yesterday's Astronomy Picture of the Day #APOD featured #GW250114! This artwork imagines the ultimate front-row seat as two black holes spiral together on their way toward producing the strongest gravitational-wave signal we've detected so far

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25092...

🎨A Simonnet 🔭🐚
This artwork imagines the ultimate front-row seat for GW250114, a powerful collision between two black holes observed in gravitational waves by the US National Science Foundation LIGO. It depicts the view from one of the black holes as it spirals toward its cosmic partner.
September 25, 2025 at 8:16 AM
ligo.org
A (simplified) interferometer layout made from brownies!

We think it's safe to eat a few more components, and still give a good idea of how things work

🖼️: D Grass

🧵🎂 #GW10Years
An intricate arrangements of brownies representing the various optical components of the LIGO interferometers. It is surprising complicated. Candles in the shape of 10 are to the side.
September 19, 2025 at 5:32 PM
ligo.org
Celebrations at @vanderbilt.edu with artistic arrangements of cupcakes. We would like to analyze some of these. For science, of course

🖼️: C Chatterjee

🧵🎂 #GW10Years
Chocolate cupcakes in the shape of a gravitational-wave signal. Is this a binary merger? It looks like it would have a high mass source? Two clusters of chocolate cupcakes, each trailing an arc of vanilla cupcakes (with sprinkles!). An artistic representation of a black hole binary inspiralling.
September 19, 2025 at 5:32 PM
ligo.org
Two black (hole) forest cakes from Lyon! Real black holes are not as chocolatey

We hope that @ehtelescope.bsky.social approve

🖼️: J Degallaix (@egovirgo.bsky.social)

🧵🎂 #GW10Years
A chocolate cake covered with chocolate shavings, decorated a variety of chocolate sphere representing our black hole observations. There are birthday candles in the shape of 1 and 0 (make a wish!) A chocolate cake topped with a EHT-style image of a black hole and "10 Ans GW150914" as well as two chocolate spheres.
September 19, 2025 at 5:13 PM
ligo.org
Last Sunday was the 10th anniversary of our first #GravitationalWave detection!

Join us for a thread of celebratory cakes enjoyed by members of our collaboration

First, a cake from @ozgrav.bsky.social Looks like plenty to share?

🖼️: J Powell

🧵🎂 #GW10Years
A sheet cake decorated with "Happy 10 Birthday GW150914", confetti, balloons, a binary black hole, and the data from our first detection, as well as the OzGrav logo. It is edged with some creamy frosting.
September 19, 2025 at 5:03 PM
ligo.org
During the recent LIGO @egovirgo.bsky.social KAGRA meeting, the 2024 winner of the LIGO Laboratory Award for Excellence in Detector Characterization and Calibration, Louis Dartez, received his honorary Calibration Wizard hat.

Congratulations to Dr. Dartez!

www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/award-e...
Louis Dartez receiving his LIGO Calibration Wizard hat at the September 2025 LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA meeting from Jess McIver. The hat is a traditional pointy blue hat, but is covered with images of lasers.
September 16, 2025 at 2:16 PM
ligo.org
Data for #GW250114, like all our detections, are available from our Open Science Center

doi.org/10.7935/1g4j...

If you would like to know more about our open data, our paper explains: arxiv.org/abs/2508.18079

#OpenScience #OpenData ☄️🔭⚛️
Screenshot of GWOSC page. This includes information on the detection, links to data, spectrogram plots, and parameter estimation results giving source parameters inferred with different waveform models
September 15, 2025 at 9:02 PM
ligo.org
The New York Times shares celebrations of our 10 year anniversary, and the challenges ahead, with memories of Rai Weiss and our clearest detection #GW250114

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/s... by Dennis Overbye

#GW10Years 🔭 🧪 ⚛️ ☄️
NY Times headline: "Happy Birthday, LIGO. Now Drop Dead. Ten years ago, astronomers made an epic discovery with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. Cosmology hasn’t been the same since, and it might not stay that way much longer." Underneath, an artistic representation of two black holes orbiting each other.
September 15, 2025 at 1:16 PM
ligo.org
Congratulations to our collaboration member Sir Jim Hough (@uofgravity.bsky.social) who has been awarded the Baird of Bute Innovation Award, for his contributions to gravitational-wave science

www.gla.ac.uk/news/headlin...
Photo of Sir Jim smiling. He is wearing his usual round glasses, and a rather snazzy tie with a print of aeroplanes.
September 15, 2025 at 11:06 AM
ligo.org
It was a long road to the first detection of gravitational waves, and exciting progress since!

Catch up with the history in this poster from @ligomagazine.bsky.social

ligo.org/wp-content/u...

🗺️: C Lee/C Knox/@ozgrav.bsky.social

#GW10Years 🔭🧪⚛️🎢
The evolution of gravitational-wave science (a colorful timeline) Starting with theoretical work in the 1910s for the form of the waves, then work in the 1950s to show the waves were real. IN 1978s Hulse and Taylor discovery the binary pulsar, showing evidence for gravitational-wave emission. Work on early detectors went through the 1980s and 1990s, with initial LIGO and Virgo operating together in the 2000s. The advanced detectors followed with development in the 2010s. The first observation came in 2015! We now have hundreds of detections.
September 15, 2025 at 1:31 AM
ligo.org
#GWTC4 is the latest collection of #GravitationalWave observations. In the past decade we have gone from zero to hundreds of detections!

Learn more about our discoveries, and the experiences of the team behind #GWTC4 in @ligomagazine.bsky.social

ligo.org/wp-content/u...

#GW10Years 🔭🧪⚛️
Screen shot of the LIGO Magazine, headline "A one-stop shop for new gravitational waves". The page includes a graphic showing mass, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and luminosity distance of gravitational wave events. Also known as the “petri dish plot”. The results from the latest observing period (O4a) have the most events, the ones at greatest distance and the ones with highest SNR. Text of the article reads "This catalog’s publication is an incredibly important moment for the LVK collaboration and for me personally. It is the culmination of more than two years of work from many hundreds of people who, at every stage of identifying and investigating the gravitational waves, have worked together in sync to make this amazing achievement happen"
September 14, 2025 at 3:40 PM
ligo.org
A timeline of GW150914. A story that begins a billion years ago and ends with our first #GravitationalWave detection 10 years ago today

Discover more in the @ligomagazine.bsky.social ligo.org/wp-content/u...

#GW10Years ⚛️🧪🔭
Screenshot of the LIGO Magazine, showing a colorful numerical relativity simulation of GW150915 along with the headline "A perfect source: Timeline of GW150914".
September 14, 2025 at 10:29 AM
ligo.org
Happy birthday to GW150914, our first (of many) #GravitationalWave discoveries, detected 10 years ago today!

#GW10Years 🧪⚛️🔭

🖼️: @chirpmass.bsky.social
A cartoon of a 10th birthday cake being swallowed by a black hole.
September 14, 2025 at 8:53 AM
ligo.org
Past and present members of our LIGO @egovirgo.bsky.social KAGRA collaboration share their memories of our first detection and the 10 years since

ligo.org/wp-content/u...

🎂 #GW10Years 🧪🔭⚛️
Cover image for the LIGO Magazine: "10 years of gravitational wave astronomy" showing data for GW150914 and GW231123 A photo of Gaby Gonzalez and Fulvio Ricci, the spokespersons at the time, cutting a celebratory cake in 2016. The cake has an artistic image of a binary black hole upon it. It was delicious!
September 13, 2025 at 10:41 PM
ligo.org
The latest issue of @ligomagazine.bsky.social is out now and free to read

🎉 Celebrate 10 years of gravitational-wave astronomy with us 🎉

ligo.org/wp-content/u...

🔭🧪⚛️ #GW10Years
Front cover of issue 27 of the LIGO Magazine 10 years of graviational wave astronomy GW150914 to GW231123: a signal that changed to world (p 6) GW231123: the most massive black hole merger yet! (p 24) GWTC-4.0 cataglgue paper (p 20) GW observatories of the future (p 34) Climate change conversations: Fossil-free supercomputing (p 40)
September 13, 2025 at 6:55 PM
ligo.org
"Ten years ago, scientists heard the universe rumble for the first time. That first discovery of gravitational waves began a new era of astronomy."

@simon-stevenson.bsky.social writes about gravitational-wave astronomy today

theconversation.com/10-years-ago...

#GW10Years 🔭🧪⚛️

🖼️: C Knox
A portrait of Einstein and Hawking with a binary black hole in between. It is rather dramatic, and shows cool light-bending effects.
September 12, 2025 at 9:29 PM
ligo.org
"This detection will quickly 'become one of my favourites', says David Reitze, executive director of the LIGO laboratory"

@jennaahart.bsky.social reviews some of our greatest discoveries, including the new #GW250114 in Nature News

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

#GW10Years 🧪⚛️🔭
Artistic interpretation of a binary black hole. It is probably more colourful than the real thing. Credit: Aurore Simonnet (SSU/EdEon)
September 12, 2025 at 7:41 PM
ligo.org
The Unfolding New Astronomical Revolution – In just a decade, the field has dramatically changed. The best is yet to come.

www.iflscience.com/the-unfoldin... by @drcarpineti.bsky.social

#GW10Years 🔭 🧪 ⚛️
"The measurements we are making now remain the most precise measurements humans have ever achieved in any field of science and engineering." - Prof Vicky Kalogera "In 10 years, not only have we made the first detection with our first observatories, we've gone to making hundreds of these." - Dr Daniel Williams
September 12, 2025 at 6:11 PM
ligo.org
Technological advances enable us to study our Universe in greater detail. Better telescopes give us clearer images, and better detectors enable clearer measurements of binary black holes.

#GW250114 is a similar signal to GW150914, but our detectors are much better!

#GW10Years 🔭🧪
Comparison of a Hubble Space Telescope image and a much clearer JWST image of the same patch of sky. Progress in telescopes has enabled many astronomical discoveries. Similarly, comparison of our detection of GW150914 in 2015 and GW250115 in 2025. The latter is much, much clearer, enabling precision tests of gravity and the nature of black holes as well as measurements of the source properties.
September 12, 2025 at 3:47 PM