* Astronomy

The Virgo gravity-wave interferometer, an 80 million experiment located outside of Pisa, Italy, has been incapacitated by a vacuum failure for most of the summer, and is expected to stay out of commission for a month or two to come. Much of the lost time, though, would not have been used for observations anyway; downtime was already scheduled to allow an upgrade of the machine, and that work has gone on in parallel with the necessary repairs.

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