LIGO is drawing 170x more Wikipedia traffic than normal

What this article is

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is a large-scale physics experiment and observatory designed to detect cosmic gravitational waves. Prior to LIGO, all data about the universe had come in the form of light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation, from limited direct exploration on relatively nearby Solar System objects such as the Moon, Mars, Venus, Jupiter and their moons, asteroids etc., and from high energy cosmic particles. Initially, two large observatories were built in the United States with the aim of detecting gravitational waves by laser interferometry. Two additional, smaller gravitational wave observatories are now operational: one in Japan (KAGRA), and one in Italy (Virgo). The two LIGO observatories use mirrors spaced 4 kilometres (13,000 ft) apart to measure changes in length—over an effective span of 1,120 kilometres (700 mi)—of less than one ten-thousandth the charge diameter of a proton.

Summary text from the Wikipedia article "LIGO", available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the full article.

Where editors were working

Wikipedia editors made 2 edits to this article on 2026-05-01, concentrated in these sections. This is evidence about the surge, not an explanation of it.

• Detections

What changed that day

The article lost 2 characters on balance that day. See everything that changed on 2026-05-01 in Wikipedia's own diff view — that is where the reason for a surge is usually visible, written and sourced by the editors who were following the story.

How this was measured

Views are Wikimedia's own pageview counts for en.wikipedia, filtered to agent=user so automated traffic is excluded. The baseline is the median of the previous 60 days, which is used instead of the mean so that an earlier surge cannot flatten a later one. The multiple is the day's views divided by that median.