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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 8h

This can be limited using “squeezing”, a technique manipulating light at the quantum level, effectively “cooling down” the relative movement of the mirrors to a few millionths of a degree above Absolute Zero

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 8h

LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA constantly battle with quantum effects on their mirrors (objects weighing more than 40 kg!), such as quantum radiation pressure noise, that is, fluctuations of the laser field that causes the mirrors to jitter.

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 8h

Even the extreme precision of the measurements required to detect gravitational waves explores and pushes the boundaries of the quantum world.

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 8h

Quantum mechanics is an extraordinary theory which, more than a century after its initial formulation, continues to surprise us and whose consequences can still be explored in many areas of physics.

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 8h

Congratulations to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis, awardees of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit”!

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 8d

People of all ages got to learn about these extraordinary signals through which the universe tells its story and how we listen to them 👂

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 8d

Barcelona, Rome, Paris, Warsaw, Madrid, Milan, Pisa, Olbia, Cascina, Bologna , L’Aquila, Napoli, Perugia, Trieste: these are only some of the cities where researchers of the Virgo Collaboration organized activities 🤯

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 8d

Ondas gravitacionales, fal grawitacyjnych, ondes gravitationnelles, onde gravitazionali, everyone was talking about gravitational waves on European Researcher’s Night 🌊

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 24d

📹 The video shows the then Virgo collaboration spokesperson Fulvio Ricci, @INFN_ researcher and professor at Sapienza University of Rome, announcing this important discovery, followed by the signal detected in September 2015.

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 24d

On September 14th 2015, the @LIGO - Virgo Collaboration finally detected gravitational waves, ripples in the "fabric" of space-time produced by events such as the merger of two black holes. Today we are happy to celebrate the 10th anniversary of this sensational discovery!

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 24d

This opens up extraordinary new scientific challenges that we will only be able to tackle in the coming years thanks to an increasingly broad and solid collaboration between different scientists, countries and institutions, both at European and global level."

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 24d

"We are living an extraordinary moment for gravitational wave research: thanks to instruments such as Virgo, LIGO and KAGRA, we can explore a dark universe that was previously completely inaccessible. - said Massimo Carpinelli, professor at Milano Bicocca University and director of EGO

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 24d

Looking ahead, Virgo continues to be a pillar of the detector network, and its contribution will be essential in paving the way for the next generation of observatories, such as the Einstein Telescope."

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 24d

The Virgo collaboration played a key role in validating the signal and defining joint analysis strategies. Over the next ten years, Virgo has contributed substantially to the detection of hundreds of gravitational events, progressively improving sensitivity and source localisation capability.

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 24d

"14 September 2015 marked the beginning of gravitational astronomy with the first direct observation of gravitational waves, GW150914. - said Gianluca Gemme, Virgo Collaboration spokesperson and researcher at INFN

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 24d

Since then, the LVK Collaboration (LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA) has observed a total of around 300 black hole mergers, some of which have been confirmed while others are awaiting further analysis.

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 24d

Exactly 10 years ago, the signal of a gravitational wave from the merger of two black holes arrived on Earth. It was not a special signal, but one like many that had always reached our planet. On that day, however, for the first time humankind was ready to listen to it. (1/7)

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 28d

"If Hawking were alive, he would have reveled in seeing [how the analysis of the GW250114 data shows] the area of the merged black holes increase.”

Background image credits: Maggie Chiang for Simons Foundation
Photo credits: NASA

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Reposted by EGO and the Virgo Collaboration

National Institute for Subatomic Physics (Nikhef) @nikhef.bsky.social · 28d

Ten years after the first gravitational wave, there is a new breakthrough: Hawking was right
www.nikhef.nl/en/news/ten-... @ligo.org @egovirgo.bsky.social

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 28d

🎙️ Kip Thorne, Nobel Laureate in Physics, recalls that Hawking phoned him to ask if LIGO might be able to test his theorem soon after learning of the first detection of a gravitational wave in 2015 and said

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 28d

🔎 Particularly in the case of GW250114 the two initial black holes had a total area of 240,000 square kilometres (about the size of the United Kingdom), while the final area was about 400,000 square kilometres (almost the size of Sweden).

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 28d

This has allowed us to verify the prediction made by Hawking in 1971 that the total surface area of the final black hole is always greater than that of the two black holes that generated it.

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 28d

The event is not very different from the first ever detection: both involve colliding black holes about 1.3 billion light years away, with masses 30 to 40 times that of our Sun ☀️ Thanks to 10 years of technological advances, we now 'heard' this signal much more clearly than the first one in 2015

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 28d

Just a few days before the 10th anniversary of gravitational wave detection, the @ligo.org - Virgo - KAGRA Collaboration is happy to announce a new major detection 📣 The signal, named GW250114, has provided us with the best observational proof to date of Stephen Hawking's black hole area theorem 🕳️🕳

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EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · Aug 27

We mourn together with his family, friends and all colleagues who have worked with him over the past fifty years on the great scientific enterprise that is listening to the universe.