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The Advanced LIGO, twin observatories designed to detect gravitational waves, begins full-scale operations this week after a 7-year overhaul. The new detectors are 10 times as powerful as their predecessors.

Robert A. Taylor has worked at Caltech for the last 45 years, most recently in the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA) for the Laser Interferometry Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) project. We spoke with Taylor about his four-and-a-half decades at the Institute.

Built to look for gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space itself that were predicted by Einstein in 1916, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is the most ambitious project ever funded by the National Science Foundation. We talk to two Caltech researchers to learn about how LIGO came to be.

The Advanced LIGO Project, a major upgrade that will increase the sensitivity of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatories instruments by a factor of 10 was officially dedicated on May 19.

A $14.5 million, five-year grant from the National Science Foundation will help with the creation and operation of a multi-institution Physics Frontiers Center.

Christian Ott, professor of theoretical astrophysics at Caltech, formulates scenarios for what happens when massive stars collapse.

Caltech professor of physics Rana Adhikari has been on a singular quest for 15 years: to detect gravitational waves.

David Reitze has been named executive director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), designed and operated by Caltech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Reitze has also been named a senior research associate at Caltech.

The National Research Council (NRC) has strongly recommended the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) as one of NASA's next two major space missions, to start in 2016 in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA). LISA will study the universe in a manner different from any other space observatory, by observing gravitational waves. The recommendation was announced August 13 in a press conference at the Keck Center of the National Academies in Washington, D.C.

An investigation by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration has significantly advanced our understanding of the early evolution of the universe. Analysis of data taken from 2005 to 2007 sets the most stringent limits yet on the amount of gravitational waves that could have come from the Big Bang in the gravitational wave frequency band where LIGO can observe. The results put new constraints on the details of how the universe looked in its earliest moments.