A network of European researchers released designs on 19 May for an ultrasensitive gravitational-wave observatory. The 'Einstein telescope', to be constructed around 2025, would be ten times more sensitive than even second-generation detectors expected to come online around 2015, such as the US Advanced LIGO experiment in Hanford, Washington State, and Livingston, Louisiana. It could also study in detail the interiors of sources producing gravitational waves. So far, no detectors have directly spotted gravitational waves - ripples in space-time thought to be produced by dramatic events such as the merger of black holes or neutron stars. See go.nature.com/apeqr5 for more.
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