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LIGO: a $250 Million Gamble the Potential Prize Would Be Great: the First Glimpses of Gravitation Al Waves

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LIGO: a $250 Million Gamble the Potential Prize Would Be Great: the First Glimpses of Gravitation Al Waves , - "i: NEWS & COMMENT · •• ::: I· i' LIGO: A $250 Million Gamble The potential prize would be great: the first glimpses of gravitation al waves. But a messy dispute at Caltech has again raised the question of whether it's too long a shot I n February 1992. then National Science "I think L1GO could come back [Q grearly fering definitive proof for the existence of ., FoundaLion (NSF) direc[oT Walter Massey haunt the scientific community if we spend black holes. Says Kip Thome. Cal tech theo­ called in the press to announce that his agency $250 million and see nothing," warns one retical physicist and member of the LIGO had selected areas in Hanford, Washington, astronomer who, like many of the officials team: 'The payoff, when it comes, is so excit­ and Livingston, Louisiana, as the two sites and scientists interviewed for this article, re­ ing that it's worm the risk." for an ambitious physics facility: (he Laser quested anonymity. "There's been so much lmerferometer Gravitational-\Vave Obser­ unharpiness out there about all chis thac I A pink s lip from LlGO vatory, otherwise known as LlOO. Later that don't th ink we will be able to easily fo rget Part of the deb.teover L1GO has been played summer, Congress dramatically stepped up it," adds University of C alifornia, Los Ange- our in the pages of technical journals and the L1GO's budget. approv­ general media. But one key aspect has re­ ing S3S million in con­ mained hidden from publtc view: the ongo­ struction stan::up funds [0 ing troubles between Caltech experimental scale up from a 40-merer physicist Ronald Drever and the rest of the prmor)'pe dereccof co LlGO team, specifically director Vogr. For tWO 4-kilometer behe­ the past 2 years or so, Drever has been, in the moths-big enough, words of one Cal tech facu lty member, "fT0- supporters claimed, to :en Out ofUGO" in a messy feud that reaked have a good chance of last year on 6 July, when Dre\'er was flf(~d snaring the fi rst direct from the prOject arparemly without exrb­ evidence of the gravita­ nation. "He was thrown off the proj ect. fo rc eJ tional waves predicted to rum in hi::. keys. kicked OUt of the lab, (\nd by Einstein's theory of raId he was persona non grata," says ont! general relatl\,ity. LIGO Calrcch faculry member fam ili ar with tht! seemed well on its W<lY, e\'t!nts. (Ne wsda; also reported some of the::.e and ir was a proud time events earher this wet! k.) \"ithm hours nf for LtS director Rochus the dismissal. Vogc sent our an e-maillettt!:r Vogt. NSF. and the rest ra the LIGO commumty saying that Drever of the scientists that was no longer associated \vith the proJect. made up the joint MIT­ Odd man out. Ronald Drever (ce nter) has been shut out of the wou ld be allowed to remove his personal pu:,­ Caltech project. project. Team members Kip Thorne (left) and Rochus Vogt. sessions from the LlGO offices only under T he euphoria wa s staff supervi sion. and had been instructed shon lived, however. For more than a year, les, space plasma physi cist Charles Kenel. not to t!:nte r LlGO premises or disturb project LIGO has been under siege from inside and who chairs the National Research Council's scientists. (Vogt \\'as traveling last week. but outside. In the latest chapter in a bitter inter­ (NRC) board on physics and astronomy. he declined through a spokesman to discuss. nal battle that many say has paralyzed the To LlGO's supporters, however. much of details of the rift wi th Dre\,er; Drever also ~ndea vo r , a committee of Caltech faculty {he latest cri ticism declined to speak with members recently concluded that Vogt and smacks of sour grapes. Science. Colleagues of LlGO's management had unfairly fired one They argue chat the Vogt and Drever pro­ of the project's chief scientists. The battle is technical concerns "The payoff, when it \'ided accounts of the more than a personality clash, for it revolves being raised are noth­ dispute.) around the crucial issue of whether the cur­ ing new and ha\-e all comes, is so exciting that Drever is n ot rent LIGO effon offers the best chance of been thoroughly in­ it's worth the risk." somebody to be taken success in what all admit is an incredibly vestigated. The project lightly, Brilliant is tbe difficult task-a question that is reverberat­ is risky, they concede, -Kip Thorne description most of­ ing among researchers outside the LIGO com­ but the return could be ten given of h im, and mUnIty as well. Adding to the acrimony is enormous. By using he is viewed byalmost UGO's $250 million price tag, which some lasers to measure, fo r (he first time, (he ex­ all as one of the key physicists whose research hold responsible for NSF's recent fu nding qUlsi te ly small ripples in space that passi ng in the 1980s transformed UGO from a dream woes. Since 1991, a number of astronomers gravitational waves from astronomical sources into a realistic undertaking. Caltech imported and physiclsts have attacked the decision to produce, researchers believe they can greatly Dre\'er from the Uni\'ersity of Glasgow in proceed with the scale up, expressmg con­ improve their understanding of general rela­ Scotland specifically to work on the detec­ cerns about whether LIGO will be able to tivity. More stirring is the hope that a se ries tion of gravitational wa ves, and when NSF detect gravitational waves, let alone fu lfill its of gravitational wave detectors around the merged the parallel effortS at MIT and Caltech promise of being an observatory. world will usher in a new day in astronomy , imo a single project in 1984, Drever's design Nov.', even <IS butldozers prepare to move pro\-iding a novel way of watching superno­ was chosen over another proposal from MIT land at each site, the level of discord is rising. vae, colliding neutron stars, and perhaps of- physicist Ramer '\i,' eiss. Furthermore, from 61 2 SCIENCE · VOL. 160 • )0 APRIL 199) 1984 (Q 1987, Dre\'er, along \\'ith \\1 eis!:' and Thome, made up the steermg commHte e that managed UGO, a task Vogt subse­ How to Catch a Gravitational Wave quently took over. The root of the current conflict. support­ R esearchers hoping Detector ers of bmh camps sa)" is a personail[\' clash to snare a graVlta­ between Voge and Drever, exacerbated bv tional wave with their eonnJCting r~ sea r eh styles and differences 0'[ proposed Laser Inter­ opinion on ho\\' the project should proceed. fe rometer Gravita­ Se\'eral sources confirm that Drever feels it is tional-\Vave Obser­ Mirror toO endv to scale up (Q t\\"o large facilities, varorv (UGO) are "\Vhat worried him most was whether they embarking on one of could do \\'hat they claimed," says one Caltech the most technically Gravity snare, A passing gravitational faculty member. It's nm that Dre"er thinks challenging tasks sci­ wave distorts space and creates unequal detecting gravitational Wewes is impossible, entists and engineers separation between the mirrors of each arm, which lIGO hopes to detect. these sources say, but that he thinks the LlGO have ever attempted. etton as cu rrently concei\'ed won'r achieve In essence, they hope the needed sensitivity in nrne, For now, to detect the subtle distortions of space-time that Einstein's theory of general relatIvity Drever wants LlGO to commit to an aggres- predicts will be caused by cataclysmic events such as the spectacularly violent collision 51 ve technology development effort, under of twO neutron stars, the mergmg of black holes, or even supernovae. hiS direction, and the construction of a bet­ If the)' can overcome the controversies swirling around UGO, they will build their ter, perhars 200-meter, prototype. Cal tech's mammoth instruments at two different, widely separated, sites-the redundancy is Tom Domhrello, a member of the recently needed to weed out local false alarms and to ge t a sense of the direction of the source. At formed LlGO m'erslght committee headed each site, high-power lasers will fire down twO identica14-kilometer-long vacuum pipes, lw former Jet propulsion Laboratory director 4 feet in diameter and perpendicular to each other, At the ends of both pipes, test Lew Allen, hints at this debate: "If we settle masses fitted \,,'ith mirrors will reflect the beams back and forth thousands of times before the techOIcal questions that exist be[\\'een returning them Si mu ltaneously to a detector, the raTtles, all [these rroblemsJ will go away," If researchers can control seismic vibrations and a variety of other noise sources that Dre \'er'~ firing also provoked 8. battle :-It could cause a minute difference in the gaps between the test masses-an incredibly C:llrech over academ ic ireedom, and acc llrd­ difficult task-those tWO be::J. ms of light would normnlly travel the same distance and mg w both surrorte-rs and critiCS 01 LlGO, it would emerge in phase, Bm if a pilssing gravltanonal wave strayed rhrough the device, has been a major dlYersion for the proJecr's kn(l\\"n as an interferometer, warping space and creating unequal sep::J.rat!ons in each m.1I1<1gement. The bnttle ~egan in Sert~m­ arm, the t\\'O beams would arrive at the detector out of phase, The in terfe rence pattern ber 1992, \\'hen Dre,'er flied:l complaint With this would create would provide infonnatlon about the strength, shape, and poiari<:Jtion the acadenllc freedom ;"tnd tenure (ommir· of the Qra\'ltational wave, re e, all elecred (<tculty rand chalf(~d by theo­ It s~u nd s simple in concept, but nOt in practice, A strong gr<lvirational wave may retl~(ll phYSICiSt Sreve Koomn, Koonm's disturb the separation or' the test masses by as litde as 10,16 centimeters-milhons of group Im'estlgated the matter and delivered times shorter than an atom's diameter, The effort to capture such waves, borh support­ a report in October 1992, sidmg with Drevcr ers ' and critics ofUGO o.gre e, wlll push current technology to its limits- and beyond.
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