After seven years of in-principle approval, the government has officially approved the construction of the LIGO India project, a significant step in advancing scientific research on gravitational waves. The LIGO India project will be a groundbreaking collaboration, aiming to bring India to the forefront of global gravitational-wave astronomy.
Key Points about the LIGO India Project
- LIGO India will be built by a collaboration between multiple departments and research institutions, including the Department of Atomic Energy, the Department of Science and Technology, and the U.S. National Science Foundation, along with several national and international research institutions.
- The LIGO India project is expected to significantly advance research in the field of gravitational-wave astronomy and help understand the universe better.
- Currently, there are three operational gravitational wave observatories around the world – two in the United States (Hanford and Livingston), one in Italy (Virgo), and one in Japan (Kagra).
What is LIGO?
- LIGO is a network of laboratories, spread around the world, designed to detect gravitational waves.
- These waves are incredibly weak, making their detection very challenging.
- The LIGO detectors are sensitive to distance changes that are several orders of magnitude smaller than the length of a proton.
- In 2015, LIGO made history by detecting gravitational waves for the first time.
- These waves were produced by the merger of two black holes that were 29 and 36 times the mass of the Sun, 1.3 billion years ago.
- This achievement earned the scientists involved in the project the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2017.
Gravitational Waves
- Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of space and time that travel at the speed of light.
- They are created by the motion of massive objects, such as black holes or neutron stars, which generate gravitational waves when they orbit or collide with each other.
- According to Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, any object with mass warps the space-time around it.
- When two massive objects orbit each other or collide, they produce ripples or waves in space-time that propagate outward at the speed of light.
- Gravitational waves are extremely weak and difficult to detect.
What Is The LIGO India Project?
- The LIGO-India project is an initiative aimed at detecting gravitational waves from the universe.
- The project is expected to commence scientific runs from 2030 and will be located in the Hingoli district of Maharashtra, approximately 450 km east of
- The detector will be built as part of LIGO-India collaboration. This project will be collaboration between Ligo-USA, India, Germany, Australia and U.K.
- Lead institutes: Institute of Plasma Research (IPR), Gandhinagar, Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT), Indore.
- The project will be funded by Department of Atomic Energy and Science and Technology, Government of India
How LIGO Works
- LIGO facility comprises of two 4-km-long vacuum chambers, built perpendicular to each other. Highly reflective mirrors are kept at the end of the vacuum chambers.
- Light rays are released simultaneously in both the vacuum chambers. They hit the mirrors, get reflected, and are captured back.
- Under normal circumstances, the light rays in both the chambers would return simultaneously. But when a gravitational wave arrives, one of the chambers gets a little elongated, while the other one gets squished a bit.
- Due to this effect, light rays do not return simultaneously, and there is a phase difference. The presence of a phase difference marks the detection of a gravitational wave
The Significance of LIGO India
- The LIGO-India project is significant as it will be the fifth node of the planned network, thereby bringing India into a prestigious international scientific experiment.
- This project will make India a unique platform that combines the frontiers of science and technology of the quantum and the cosmos.
- It has the potential to provide unprecedented insights into the mysteries of the universe, including the nature of black holes, neutron stars, and other celestial phenomena, reports the Indian Express
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