News
Richard O'Shaughnessy

RIT scientists were involved in a published paper about new evidence of intermediate-mass black holes, or black holes with masses between 100 and 100,000 times the mass of the sun.

According to scientists from across the globe—including those working on the project from RIT—this observing run by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaboration features upgraded instruments, new and even more accurate signal models, and more advanced data analysis methods.

Scientists on the hunt for a previously undetected type of gravitational waves believe they are getting close and have refined techniques to use in upcoming observational runs. Researchers from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration outlined the most sensitive search to date for continuous gravitational waves from a promising source in a paper recently published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Richard O’Shaughnessy, an associate professor in RIT’s School of Mathematical Sciences, was awarded a prestigious fellowship to spend the next year preparing for an “onslaught” of gravitational wave discoveries. He is one of 10 faculty worldwide named 2022 Simons Fellows in Theoretical Physics and is the first RIT faculty member to receive the award.

The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration unveiled several studies that shed important new light on the nature of gravitational waves. They include a “census” of gravitational wave events to date and a new catalog of results from the second half of its third observing run.

For the first time, scientists detected gravitational waves caused by mergers between black holes and neutron stars. Researchers from RIT’s Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation (CCRG) helped identify key characteristics about the merger events.

Erika Holmbeck, who has been working as a postdoctoral associate with Associate Professor Richard O’Shaughnessy in the Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation since fall 2020, will begin as a Hubble Fellow in fall 2021.

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration released a catalog of results from the first half of its third observing run (O3a), and scientists have detected more than three times as many gravitational waves than the first two runs combined. Several researchers from RIT’s Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation were heavily involved in analyzing the gravitational waves and understanding their significance.

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration recently announced the discovery of GW190521, the most massive gravitational wave binary observed to date, and Rochester Institute of Technology scientists played an important role in identifying and analyzing the event.