A month ago, the proposed NSF budget would shut down one of the two LIGO observatories in the US, wrecking its ability to triangulate the location of events such as this black hole merger. A shutdown would also severely damage the noise margins and detection rate. Does anyone know if the shutdown is still planned? (I couldn't find any recent info.)
I believe the proposed budget is being marked up tomorrow (July 15th, 12:00). Currently the NSF budget is set to be ~$7 billion, a 23% cut compared to FY2025. I'm not sure how this affects LIGO exactly.
I was last week at an event in Pisa at virgo ego (basically ligo's cousin). It was to celebrate the 10th anniversary of finding gravitational waves iirc. There were an actress reading from the book the director of the Italian program wrote accompanied by the sound of waves made with sax. I can't describe it with words but it was truly moving.
There were also moments dedicated to interviewing a science communicator and the director of the virgo center, and he was, let's say, quite angry at the thought of ligo losing funding. Rightfully so
the collaboration to be able to triangulate is composed of LIGO, Virgo and now KAGRA. KAGRA is not yet fully ready for longer observation runs, so for now it's basically LIGO and Virgo - and if you take offline one of three, triangulation becomes nearly useless
I think all the previous events were announced with a big delay. They have a long pipeline of checks. The signals have too much noise and it's difficult not to cheat and find fake signals in the noise. IIRC they even have a team that adds secretly fake signals to ensure the pipeline is working and after it's detected the team disclose if it's real or fake, before publication.
https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-s-proposed-cut...