Sadly, my Pokémon-based naming convention for gravitational waves has not been as widely adopted as I would have hoped #GWTC2 https://twitter.com/cplberry/status/1130829286364078080

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I'm very excited to see what everyone makes of these new observations. Putting together #GWTC2 was a huge effort by many, many people in @LIGO and @ego_virgo. We've never analysed these many signals before! For more gravitational-wave goodness: https://twitter.com/i/lists/232216910

For the first time, we can measure that some black holes have spins misaligned with their orbital angular momentum. On the whole more spins are misaligned by less than 90 degrees than more than 90 degrees. This could be a hint on how they form #GWTC2

The inferred mass distribution for primary (larger) black holes in binary black holes using different parameterised models. A simple power law doesn't work so well. The mass distribution extends higher than previously. This is what the family of black holes looks like! #GWTC2

Our observations can tell us about how black holes and neutron stars form. We infer a binary black hole merger rate density of 23.9+14.9−8.6 Gpc−3 yr−1 (which increases with redshift) and a binary neutron star merger rate density of = 320+490−240 Gpc−3 yr−1 #GWTC2

7 We look for gravitational wave echoes after the merger
8 We check for evidence of additional gravitational-wave polarizations
In all cases, we find no evidence for deviations from general relativity, unaccounted for physics or evidence of systematics in our analysis ✅ #GWTC2

With our *50* gravitational-wave candidates, we can start to do some really cool things #GWTC2 With more detections we can perform more exacting tests of @AlbertEinstein's theory of general relativity. So far, so good. Next time 👀

This plot is art. Gravitational-wave astronomy is only 5 years old and already we have more data than we know how to plot.

The masses of the components of the binaries (m1 > m2), the mass ratio q = m2/m1, the effective inspiral spin chi_eff and luminosity distance D_L #GWTC2

#GWTC2 has a false alarm rate threshold for inclusion of 2 per year. This is applied to each of our detection pipelines independently, so we'd expect about 3 false alarms mixed in with the real signals, so we do need to be careful (especially with the low significance ones)

We have so far announced #GW190412, #GW190425, #GW190521 and #GW190814 from #GWTC2. This leaves a lot more. Most look like binary black holes (my favourite), but GW190426 (a low significance candidate) could be a neutron star–black hole binary?

The @LIGOLA @LIGOWA & @ego_virgo detectors were more sensitive than ever before in #O3, enabling a much higher rate of detection. We've totally eclipsed what came before, with 39 gravitational wave candidates from O3a #GWTC2

LIGO-P2000061-v14: GWTC-2: Compact Binary Coalescences Ob...

The #GWTC2 papers will be on today's arXiv. While we wait, here are links to our document server:

The Catalogue Paper: https://dcc.ligo.org/LIGO-P2000061/public
Tests of General Relativity Paper: https://dcc.ligo.org/LIGO-P2000091/public
The Binary Population Paper:...

For all your gravitational-wave needs, the new @LIGO–@ego_virgo catalogue in out, covering the first half of the third observing run. Look at all the discoveries! #GWTC2

https://www.gw-openscience.org/eventapi/html/GWTC/