A Technician Works on 1 of LIGO's Optics (IMAGE)

U.S. National Science Foundation

A Technician Works on 1 of LIGO's Optics

Caption

A technician works on one of LIGO's optics. At each observatory, the two-and-a-half-mile long L-shaped LIGO interferometer uses laser light split into two beams that travel back and forth down the arms. The beams are used to monitor the distance between mirrors precisely positioned at the ends of the arms. According to Einstein's theory, the distance between the mirrors will change when a gravitational wave passed by the detector.

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LIGO Laboratory

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