New insights emerge from LIGO’s gravitational-wave data

Researchers from the LIGO collaboration who last week announced they had detected the first ever gravitational waves – spewed out from two merging black holes – have also picked up a second possible gravitational-wave event. Although the signal from "LVT151012" is much weaker than the confirmed “GW150914” event, the LIGO team says it most likely has an astrophysical source and arose from two coalescing black holes. The researchers have in addition spotted “several even less significant events in the data, most likely just due to some disturbance at the detectors", which they are now analysing to see if any are from gravitational waves. Their conclusions, expected over the course of this year, will see the new era of gravitational-wave astronomy finally start.