Gravity and astrophysics at UMiss

In 2008, the Advanced LIGO Construction Project began with the goal of building new LIGO interferometers capable of detecting many gravitational wave events per year. After seven very intense years of building and testing the interferometers, the Advanced LIGO Construction Project has formally completed, on time and on budget. On Tuesday, the LIGO laboratory Directorate accepted the recommendations of the Advanced LIGO Project Management Team and the System Acceptance Review Team to turn the Hanford and Livingston interferometers over to LIGO Operations. The LIGO Team at UM would like to express heartfelt thanks to all LIGO Lab and LIGO Scientific Collaboration colleagues who have worked so hard to make Advanced LIGO a reality. The success of aLIGO to date is a remarkable accomplishment and a major milestone for our field. The next few years will no doubt be quite exciting!