Impact on Society

The extraordinary challenges, that gravitational-wave detection needs to face, require the scientists to develop cutting-edge technologies, that can have significant applications in many different areas: high-stability laser systems; electro-opto-mechanical sensors, ultra-high vacuum; very-low-loss glasses and surface coatings; high-performance vibration isolation systems; adaptive optics systems; quantum-sensing techniques; data-analysis techniques,based on machine- and deep-learning methods, Big Data and distributed computing.

Furthermore, noise hunting turns the detector and its auxiliary sensors into an extraordinary ear, listening not only to the cosmos, but also to our environment. The combination of all these data can have applications, for example, in the fields of seismology (earthquakes studies and prevention) and climate change.