Ligo

LIGO

LIGO, which stands for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, is a large-scale physics experiment aiming to directly detect gravitational waves. Cofounded in 1992 by Kip Thorne and Ronald Drever of Caltech and Rainer Weiss of MIT, LIGO is a joint project between scientists at MIT, Caltech, and many other colleges and universities. It is sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). At the cost of $365 million (in 2002 USD), it is the largest and most ambitious project ever funded by the NSF. The international LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) is a growing group of researchers, over 800 individuals at roughly 50 institutions, working to analyze the data from LIGO and other detectors, and working toward more sensitive future detectors. The current spokesperson for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, elected in March 2011, is Louisiana State University Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Gabriela González.