Artistic impression of the BNS coalescence Ⓒ LIGO/Virgo 11 MSCA fellows from the EU funded project GraWIToN are participating to the breakthrough of the first cosmic event observed in both gravitational waves and light. Moreover, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is contributing to this unprecedented discovery. For the first time, scientists have directly detected gravitational waves — ripples in space and time — in addition to light from the spectacular collision of two neutron stars. This marks the first time that a cosmic event has been viewed in both gravitational waves and light. Now scientists were able to "see" and "hear" the cosmic events in order to better understand them. This gives them the opportunity to further deepen and transform our understanding of the workings of the universe The discovery was made using the U.S.-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO); the Europe-based Virgo detector; and some 70 ground- and space-based observatories. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has received around 14 MEuro from the European Union. Map of the GW detectors and of the telescopes participating to the detection Ⓒ NSF/LIGO/Sonoma State University/Aurore Simonnet 11 researchers from the Initial Training Network GraWIToN project, funded under the FP7 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, directly contributed to this scientific achievement announced earlier that demonstrates the possibility to study rare cosmic events using both traditional as well as gravitational-wave observatories. The EU-funded GraWIToN (received 3.67 MEuro EU-funding) recruited young researchers in institutions in France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. These researchers were involved in experimental analysis, data analysis and simulations both in Virgo and LIGO detectors. The MSCA fellows are the following: Matthieu Gosselin (Experimental) Zeno Tornasi (Experimental) Daniel Töyrä (Simulation-Experimental) Jose M. González Castro (Simulation-Experimental) Imran Khan (Experimental) Omar De Varona (Experimental) Marina Trad Nery (Experimental) Shubhanshu Tiwari (Data Analysis) Gang Wang (Data Analysis) Serena Vinciguerra (Data Analysis) Akshat Singhal (Data Analysis) LIGO is funded by the NSF, and operated by Caltech and MIT, which conceived of LIGO and led the Initial and Advanced LIGO projects. Financial support for the Advanced LIGO project was led by the NSF with Germany (Max Planck Society), the U.K. (Science and Technology Facilities Council) and Australia (Australian Research Council) making significant commitments and contributions to the project. More than 1,200 scientists and some 100 institutions from around the world participate in the effort through the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, which includes the GEO Collaboration and the Australian collaboration OzGrav. Additional partners are listed at http://ligo.org/partners.php The Virgo collaboration consists of more than 280 physicists and engineers belonging to 20 different European research groups: six from Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France; eight from the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) in Italy; two in the Netherlands with Nikhef; the MTA Wigner RCP in Hungary; the POLGRAW group in Poland; Spain with the University of Valencia; and the European Gravitational Observatory, EGO, the laboratory hosting the Virgo detector near Pisa in Italy, funded by CNRS, INFN, and Nikhef. Links "The EU funded project GraWIToN contributes to the new era for gravitational wave science" GW170814 Press Kit http://www.virgo-gw.eu/docs/GW170814/ "EU-backed researchers prove Einstein right on gravitational waves" https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/worldwide/asean/eu-backed-researchers-prove-einstein-right-gravitational-waves "Gravitational waves detected, scientists announce" https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/gravitational-waves-detected-scientists-announce_en.html GraWIToN http://www.grawiton-gw.eu/ https://www.eso.org/public/announcements/ann17071/ Details Publication date16 October 2017AuthorEuropean Research Executive AgencyLocationBrussels
