Joe Giaime
@giaime.net
160 followers 110 following 28 posts
Professor, Physics and Astronomy (LSU), LIGO Livingston observatory head (Caltech). Content here is my personal take, not representing my organizations.
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giaime.net
(rough guide, not rouge guide.)
giaime.net
Let's see what the (US) Amazon iPhone app showed me recently when I was browsing for Szalzi books. Here is the product page for Rouge Guide to Money Online. There were other views available, mostly pants.
Screencap of the Amazon app, showing a photo of pants instead of a book.
Reposted by Joe Giaime
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.
giaime.net
@clargrune.bsky.social of The Advocate covered the 10th anniversary of our GW detection. www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/...
Amid concerns over potential cuts, Livingston's LIGO scientists mark 10th anniversary of monumental discovery BY CLAIRE GRUNEWALD | Staff writer Sep 14, 2025

A signal lasting less than a second traveled about 1.3 billion light years before it reached an obser vatory deep in the piney woods of Livingston 10 years ago.
The brief signal — caused by a pair of black holes colliding - the first gravitational waves ever detected, and it created a new way for scientists to look into the uni-verse.
The Sept. 14, 2015, detection con-tirmed a key prediction of Albert Einstein's general theory of rela-tivity, earned the Nobel Prize in physics and kick-started a new era of astronomy.
"Most of us had figured that with nature being perverse, that the first signal would be really hard to pull out of the noise. And then the signal came beautifully, beautifully clear," said Joseph Giaime, head of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in Livingston.
giaime.net
Not quite. See 2. in the screencap. If you are just a fun-loving pedant, peace.
po di um (po'dē-am)
* n.
pl. podiums or po dia (-de-a)
1. An elevated platform, as for an orchestra conductor or public speaker.
2. A stand for holding the notes of a public speaker; a lectern.
giaime.net
Here are some more photos from the 10th anniversary event at LIGO Livingston: Gabriela González, LSU Pres. Matt Lee, Bryan Wallace—advisor to the La. Governor, and the assembled audience.
Gabriela González speaking in front of a projection screen that shows a caricature of Einstein surfing on a gravitational wave. LSU's interim President Matt Lee, speaking from a stage Brian Wallace, senior advisor to the La. Governor, speaking from podium. Group of people seated in an auditorium
giaime.net
Gabriela González's keynote slides and voice from LLO's Sept 14 anniversary event are up, thanks to Jorge Pullin! #GW10Years
giaime.net
#GW10Years
giaime.net
Gabriela González gives the keynote at LIGO Livingston’s celebration of the 10th anniversary of our detection of gravitational waves.
giaime.net
Gabriela González gives the keynote at LIGO Livingston’s celebration of the 10th anniversary of our detection of gravitational waves.
Reposted by Joe Giaime
ligo.org
What a difference a decade makes! Announcing the clearest #GravitationalWave detection ever #GW250114

youtu.be/2XmZ8-XQ9jU

📓: doi.org/10.1103/kw5g...

🔭🧪⚛️☄️ #O4IsHere
GW250114 – The Clearest of Chirps
YouTube video by LIGO Virgo KAGRA
youtu.be
Reposted by Joe Giaime
ligo.org
The loudest #GravitationalWave in #GWTC4 is #GW230814

Detected with only Livingston, it was still about twice as loud as GW150914!

Being loud should enable precision tests of general relativity, but with only one detector, you need to be careful with the analysis

ligo.org/science-summ...

🔭⚛️☄️🧪
The gravitational-wave signal GW230814. The top panel shows the time-frequency representation of the signal where brighter regions indicate larger amplitude. The CWT acronym points to the method used to construct this time-frequency representation, based on the Continuous Wavelet Transform. The bottom panel shows the signal represented as a time series. The blue and purple lines show two different methods of reconstruction for the signal waveform. It is clear that the signal is a compact binary coalescence and the data are in good agreement with the reconstructions until the ringdown part. Being such a loud signal allows us to make this wonderfully precise reconstruction!
giaime.net
And, from the US team, immense gratitude to the NSF and the taxpayers who fund the work.
giaime.net
This preview thumbnail hints at all the work that went into taking and calibrating the data being released.
astroarxiv.bsky.social
Open Data from LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA through the First Part of the Fourth Observing Run. The LIGO Scientific Collaboration et. al. https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.18079
Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4
giaime.net
Nice preview of a few paper figures. These big full-collaboration papers are an immense amount of work for which we are all grateful.
astroarxiv.bsky.social
GWTC-4.0: An Introduction to Version 4.0 of the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog. The LIGO Scientific Collaboration et. al. https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.18080
Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4
Reposted by Joe Giaime
ligo.org
Results from the first part of our fourth LIGO @egovirgo.bsky.social KAGRA observing run are out today!

We're pleased to share the largest catalog of gravitational-wave observations with more discoveries of black holes and neutron stars

📰 arxiv.org/abs/2508.18082

🔭🧪⚛️☄️ #GWTC4
New masses in the stellar graveyard plot, showing astronomical observations of black holes and neutron stars. The number of gravitational-wave observations of black holes is overwhelming. The plot is arranged to look nice, the horizontal axis has no meaning, but the vertical one shows masses. We have a significant range of masses from about 1 solar mass to over 200 solar masses for our largest merger remnant. New out today is a neutron star black hole binary GW230518_125908, as well as a lot of binary black holes.
giaime.net
The LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA GW data from the first big chunk of O4 is releases today. Our catalog paper is here: arxiv.org/abs/2508.18082