Their paper lays out the conditions for how to find such effects in future data. The next LIGO run is scheduled to begin in 2022, with an upgrade to make the detectors even more sensitive than they already are.
"In our last observing run with LIGO, we were seeing a new gravitational wave reading every six days, which is amazing. But in the entire universe, we think they're actually happening once every five minutes," Ezquiaga said. "In the next upgrade, we could see so many of those—hundreds of events per year."
The increased numbers, he said, make it more likely that one or more wave will have traveled through a massive object, and that scientists will be able to analyze them for clues to the missing components.