A joint French and Italian project to build a gravitational wave detector
finally received the go-ahead from the Italian authorities last month. France
approved the project more than a year ago.
The detector, called VIRGO, will try to measure the elusive gravity
waves which are thought to ripple through the Universe after violent events
such as the collapse of a star to form a black hole. The waves are predicted
by Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
The detector will be built on a 40-hectare site at Cascina, near Pisa,
for an estimated £44 million. The first signals are not expected
to be detected before 1998.
