New Telescopes Trained On Vastness of Space Find... Nothing (Yet)
By rickyjames, Section News Posted on Mon Apr 14, 2003 at 04:46:14 AM PST
When you take the initial look through a new telescope, it's traditionally been called called "first light". Seems we need a new term as new telescopes come on line that are designed to explore space in ways don't even use the electromagnetic spectrum. "First wave" for LIGO, perhaps, or "first particle" for AMANDA. LIGO is the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, and uses miles-long laser beams and mirrors to detect ripples in the very fabric of space-time that would be caused by colliding black holes or neutron stars. AMANDA is the Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array and uses over 700 video sensors buried deep in clear ice at the South Pole to look for flashes of subatomic particles from supernovas as they whiz by and hit an occasional ice molecule. Both have been "turned on" recently, and news releases on initial observations by both have just been released. For LIGO, in its first run no gravitational wave events were observed, but palpable knowledge was gained as to what the sky should look like when viewed in the form of gravity waves. As for AMANDA, "By astronomer's standards we're not doing that well," researcher Steven Barwick admits. Fortunately, even this lack of evidence is useful to theorists. "AMANDA is putting severe constraints on the most optimistic models of these events," says Charles Dermer of the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC.
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