LIGO, the worldwide network of gravitational wave detectors, has found nothing on its first pass. But that’s not necessarily a failure – the negative result means that for the first time, astronomers can put upper limits on the number of violent, space-twisting events happening in our galactic backyard. “This shows that LIGO can do real astrophysics,” says team analyst Jolien Creighton from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.
Einstein predicted that objects moving through space would create gravitational waves that disturb the fabric of space-time. These waves would come from neutron stars spiralling in and merging, for example, or the fallout…
