The rise of LIGO’s space-studying super-team | symmetry magazine
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/the-rise-of-ligos-space-studying-super-team
Scientists including astronomers working with the Fermi Large Area Telescope have recorded brief bursts of high-energy photons
called gamma rays coming from distant reaches of space. They suspect such eruptions result from the merging of two neutron stars—
the collapsed cores of dying stars—or from the collision of a neutron star and a black hole.
But gamma rays alone can’t tell them that. The story of the dense, crashing cores would be more convincing if astronomers saw
a second signal coming from the same event—for example, the release of ripples in space-time called gravitational waves.
“The Fermi Large Area Telescope detects a few short gamma ray bursts per year already, but detecting one in correspondence to
a gravitational-wave event would be the first direct confirmation of this scenario,” says postdoctoral researcher Giacomo Vianello
of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, a joint institution of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and
Stanford University.
Scientists discovered gravitational waves in 2015 (announced in 2016). Using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory,
or LIGO, they detected the coalescence of two massive black holes.
LIGO scientists are now sharing their data with a network of fellow space watchers to see if any of their signals match up. Combining
multiple signals to create a more complete picture of astronomical events is called multi-messenger astronomy.