Nature:
Today a team of scientists in Europe released the results of a
€3 million ($4.3 million)
design
study on the Einstein Telescope (ET), writes Eugenie Samuel
Reich for
Nature. The telescope, scheduled to be constructed
around 2025, would represent the third generation of
gravitational wave detectors. The first generation includes the
US's Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory
(LIGO), already in operation, and the second includes Advanced
LIGO, which will not go online until around 2015. The €1
billion ($1.4 trillion) ET observatory will continue the search
for gravitational waves and their sources, thought to include
such dramatic astrophysical events as the merger of black holes
or neutron stars. Such large ripples in spacetime, which were
first predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity,
have yet to be directly detected. The new telescope, which will
be 10 times as sensitive as Advanced LIGO, also offers the
potential to probe the earliest moments of the universe just
after the Big Bang.
