This is very important research having to do with the Big Bang and the nature of the early unfolding Universe. And we may well have to wait. Some amazing discoveries have a Eureka!-like quality; others take time, long, arduous research and obsessive attention to minutiae such as very hard-to-detect gravitational waves. Read the whole article and related articles before you jump to the conclusion that this research is a waste of resources or political in nature.
For starters, read about the item they are so arduously looking for, and the power of the new laser instrument to find it:
Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of space and time that propagate across the Universe like sound waves do after an earthquake.
But in this case, the sources of the "tremors" are very energetic events such as supernovas (the explosion of a dying star), fast spinning neutron stars (very dense and compact stars), or the collision of black holes and neutron stars orbiting close to each other.
With Ligo's current precision, the interferometer should be able to detect gravitational waves coming from neutron star and black hole binary systems 27 megaparsecs (about 88 million light-years) away from us.
Researchers are still working on the intricate optical system and detectors within Advanced Ligo to gradually increase the precision.
"The target is to reach (a distance of) 200 megaparsecs… which is a factor of 10 better than the old detector," explained Prof Freise.
Augmenting the distance by a factor of 10 means that Ligo will scan a volume of space 1,000 times larger than before.--from the OP
Also helpful is the context of the new theory about the Big Bang:
Cosmic inflation: Confidence lowered for Big Bang signal
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27935479
The evidence has turned out to be shaky that there was a vast inflationary episode instantly following the Big Bang--an inflationary episode that accounts for the uniformity of the universe as we look about the sky in any direction. Detecting gravitational waves would help confirm this inflationary theory.
Also, both the Ligo team and others are researching black holes themselves--looking for gravitational waves from collisions between two black holes and between black holes and other objects. You'd have to be brain dead not to be interested in black holes--the most mysterious objects in the universe. We have one right here in our own Milky Way Galaxy and there are many, many others--probably at least one in every galaxy in the universe. Here is a very helpful article on the other kinds of gravitational wave research.
Black hole collision research could also test Einstein
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-15581364
We are living in the most exciting and amazing period of physics and astronomy research ever. Personally, I find Ligo and other such research something to be proud of, as a human being and as a member of western civilization.
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