(I'm a Ph.D. student working on LIGO)
I think the author is missing the point a bit. LIGO is an observatory, and as it gets more sensitive, we certainly hope to see GW detections become normal!
It is already interesting and surprising that the universe contains so many intermediate mass black holes. This was unexpected, and our continued observation of them means that they are unlikely to be a statistical fluke.
Others have mentioned that LIGO also searches for other source types, like neutron star mergers, continuous GWs, and core-collapse supernovae. Assuming our predictions are right, these will be exciting to see, but eventually some of those observations will become routine.
However, you still gain a lot of information from routine observations! Routine observations let us start understanding the statistics of phenomena, which lets us figure out things like how common black holes are and when they evolve in our universe's history. It doesn't sound as sexy as a new discovery, but it's the kind of stuff you use to brainstorm and test new cosmological theories. You need it in order to do real science!
I'll also add that, as a new type of observatory, LIGO and Virgo are like an entirely new sense. It's like we can hear the universe all of a sudden, and our hearing is improving with time. What is really exciting to me is that we will most likely see things that nobody has predicted yet.
I think the author is missing the point a bit. LIGO is an observatory, and as it gets more sensitive, we certainly hope to see GW detections become normal!
It is already interesting and surprising that the universe contains so many intermediate mass black holes. This was unexpected, and our continued observation of them means that they are unlikely to be a statistical fluke.
Others have mentioned that LIGO also searches for other source types, like neutron star mergers, continuous GWs, and core-collapse supernovae. Assuming our predictions are right, these will be exciting to see, but eventually some of those observations will become routine.
However, you still gain a lot of information from routine observations! Routine observations let us start understanding the statistics of phenomena, which lets us figure out things like how common black holes are and when they evolve in our universe's history. It doesn't sound as sexy as a new discovery, but it's the kind of stuff you use to brainstorm and test new cosmological theories. You need it in order to do real science!
I'll also add that, as a new type of observatory, LIGO and Virgo are like an entirely new sense. It's like we can hear the universe all of a sudden, and our hearing is improving with time. What is really exciting to me is that we will most likely see things that nobody has predicted yet.