Virgo, a European gravitational wave detector, has started combining data with the US Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (Ligo)—the only initiative to ever detect such waves.
Virgo, which is based in Cascina in Italy and is operated by researchers from France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain, officially joined Ligo’s second observation run on 1 August. In a statement, the Virgo collaboration described the induction as “a major step forward”.
Ligo detected gravitational waves for the first time in 2015, and again in December 2015 and January this year, using two instruments based in the United States. The Virgo partnership collaborated on the data analysis for those discoveries, but the Virgo detector was not sufficiently sensitive to contribute data.
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