We stand at an unprecedented time in the history of astrophysics. The first direct detection of a gravitational wave (GW) in September 2015 has opened a window into a new spectrum of data and observation and humanity\u2019s return to the Moon promises a whole new era of science. Vanderbilt\u2019s Lunar Labs Initiative was started to forge a frontier in space science by revealing secrets of the universe only observable from the lunar surface.<\/p>\n
Since that first GW detection, enthusiasm for GW research has exploded. There are already earth-based observatories like LIGO<\/a> and Virgo<\/a>, which made the first observation of a gravitational wave. Plans are also in place for space observatories, like the ESA-led LISA program<\/a>.<\/p>\n These are important and ground-breaking programs, but they have their limits. Gravitational wave detectors are incredibly sensitive, and Earth\u2019s seismic noise is too loud to observe any frequency of gravitational wave lower than a few Hz. Space observatories don\u2019t have to account for seismic noise, but they have inherent quantum limitations that make it impossible for them to survey frequencies higher than 0.1Hz.<\/p>\n The LLI plans to explore 70 percent of the observable volume of the universe through the 0.1-10Hz band. Luckily, the moon\u2019s near-vacuum, lower gravity, and reduced seismic activity make it a great location to establish a GW observatory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We stand at an unprecedented time in the history of astrophysics. The first direct detection of a gravitational wave (GW) in September 2015 has opened a window into a new spectrum of data and observation and humanity\u2019s return to the Moon promises a whole new era of science. Vanderbilt\u2019s Lunar Labs Initiative was started to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":459,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lab.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/lunarlabs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lab.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/lunarlabs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lab.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/lunarlabs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lab.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/lunarlabs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/459"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lab.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/lunarlabs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/lab.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/lunarlabs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":222,"href":"https:\/\/lab.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/lunarlabs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/123\/revisions\/222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lab.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/lunarlabs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lab.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/lunarlabs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}