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Mahesh

12/04/23 06:31 AM IST

India to soon get Ligo to catch gravitational waves

In News
  • Centre has cleared the way for the construction of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the country at a cost of Rs 2600.
About LIGO
  • It is an international network of laboratories meant to detect gravitational waves.
  • Under this, two large observatories (~ 3000 Km apart) were built in the US (Hanford Site, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana) with the aim of detecting gravitational waves by laser interferometry.
  • Interferometry is a technique which uses the interference of superimposed waves to extract information.
  • Besides the US, such gravitational wave observatories are currently operational in Europe and Japan.
  • LIGO-India will be the fifth, and possibly the final node of the planned network.
Gravitational Waves
  • These are the ripples in space-time produced by the movement of large celestial bodies like stars and planets.
  • These were postulated over 100 years ago in Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity that encapsulates the current understanding of how gravitation works.
  • However, they were first discovered in 2015 by two LIGOs based in the United States.
  • In 2017, this experimental verification of the century-old theory received the Nobel Prize in Physics (to Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne).
  • Until now, at least 10 events producing gravitational waves have been detected.
India and LIGO
  • It is a planned advanced gravitational-wave observatory (as part of the worldwide network), which received the Indian Government's in-principle approval in 2016.
  • The LIGO detector in India would be similar to the two that are located in the US and (like these) would have two perpendicularly-placed 4-km long vacuum chambers, that constitute the most sensitive interferometers in the world.
  • It will be built by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, with an MoU with the National Science Foundation (NSF), USA, etc.
  • LIGO-India is a multidisciplinary mega-science project that requires expertise from a variety of fields (laser, vacuum, optics, computer, etc.) and provides cutting edge research opportunities - giving a global role to India.
  • To be located in Hingoli district of Maharashtra. LIGO-India is scheduled to begin its scientific runs from 2030.
  • It has taken several years for the final approval, with a budget of Rs 2,600 crore.
Source- The Hindu

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