In a space research collaboration between India and the United States , The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) — a giant facility to detect cosmic gravitational waves with US collaboration, will come up in Hingoli district of Maharashtra. ,
This large-scale physics experiment and observatory in US had detected the presence of black holes last year by detecting cosmic gravitational waves which was hurled towards Earth.
“Hingoli has been chosen for the LIGO-India observatory and laboratory, for which the state government will provide the land,” Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis was quoted by The Indian Express.
The LIGO-India will be piloted and overseen by the Department of Atomic Energy and Department of Science and Technology.
The LIGO-India shall be coordinated and executed by three leading research institutions – Pune’s Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Indore’s Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT) and Gandhinagar’s Institute for Plasma Research (IPR).
While IUCAA will provide the scientific teams, data acquisition and scientific data computation, RRCAT will provide its expertise in lasers and laser technology, while IPR will contribute in the high vacuum and cryogenic systems for the prestigious project.
The detection gravitational waves also proved renowned physicist Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.
Gravitational waves are generated by hyper energetic deep space events caused by black holes, neutron stars, supernova and even the Big Bang.
LIGO-India will enable scientists to locate sources over the entire sky and the ellipses on the sky maps indicate how much more accurately sources can be found with the Indian facility.
