A Glitch in the LIGO

LIGO is the most sensitive and complicated gravitational experiment ever built. To detect gravitational waves even from the strongest events in the Universe, LIGO needs to be able to know when the length of its 4-kilometer arms change by a distance 10,000th part of the diameter of a proton! This makes LIGO susceptible to a great deal of instrumental and environmental sources of noise (or glitches). Moreover, it is well known how an interferometer (theoretically) works but every single observation LIGO makes, be it a glitch or an expected detection, has a great deal of information stored within. This also led to the development of a lot of fields, physics and technology to support the great project to work undeterred. 

A major development in LIGO was its conversion from iLIGO to aLIGO, just in time catch the Gravitational Wave in September 2015. This included deployment of techniques like Seismic isolation, optical energy stability, vacuum environment for the optics and of course storage of vast information.

Something that had a significant presence in these years were the glitches. Unwanted as they are, a study of them is always necessary to eliminate their causes and deleting them from the output received. A little successful in this part, a few of them has been identified and rectified, but a room for development always exists.