"space-based gravity-wave detector", called LISA for Laser Interferometer Space

[Cricket]

"space-based gravity-wave detector", called LISA for Laser
Interferometer Space
Antenna, will be launched into space sometime in 2012. It's designed
to detect
faint gravity waves from great distances(I also read that gravity
waves were
emitted less than a trillionth of a second after the instant
everything Unlike
electromagnetic radiation (radio to optical to gamma rays),
gravitational waves
penetrate through all matter, thereby allowing us to see back to the
beginning
of the Universe without obscuration by dust or other matter. LISA, the
first
instrument to directly measure gravitational radiation from space,
will peer
back to the epoch of initial star formation. It will test Einstein's
theory of
general relativity in the strong-field regime, and will witness the
merger of
supermassive black holes throughout the Universe, along with other
astrophysical
phenomena.

LISA is a gravity wave telescope similar to a Michelson
interferometer. Three
identical spacecraft are flown in deep space in an Earth-trailing
orbit, forming
the vertices of an equilateral triangle with arm spacing of five
million
kilometers. Laser beams between these spacecraft enable
interferometric
measurement of relative displacements between these spacecraft, with
the
incredible accuracy of several picometers. With this accuracy, one is
able to
measure the tiny distortions of spacetime caused by a passing
gravitational
wave. These waves, produced by such cataclysmic events as the merger
of
supermassive black holes, propagate unattenuated throughout the
Universe, and
thus allow us to see back to the time of star formation and beyond.

LISA detects gravitational radiation with periods of several seconds
to a few
hours, such as that produced by two coalescing massive black holes in
a distant
galaxy. LISA will also provide an unprecedented test of strong field
general
relativity theory.

 As the first dedicated space-based
gravitational wave observatory, LISA will detect waves generated by
binaries
within our Galaxy, the Milky Way, and by massive black holes in
distant
galaxies. LISA will make its observations in a low-frequency band that
ground-based detectors can't achieve. The difference in frequency
bands between
LISA and gravity-wave ground detectors such as the Laser
Interferometer
Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), which operate above 1 Hz, make
these
detectors complementary rather than competitive.