Work On India’s LIGO to Commence Soon

like 587 Posted By : ScienceIndia Administrator

As a part of the MoU signed between the Department of Science and Technology and the US-based National Science Foundation, the construction of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) at Hingoli, Maharashtra, will commence very soon.

The MoU was signed in 2016. The observatory that will cost approximately Rs 12.6 billion will be built on the lines of the LIGO gravitational-wave observatory in the United States. The project is likely to be completed in 2024.

According to a report in Nature, US will provide the hardware, technical design and training and assistance for the project.  The LIGO laboratory in the US conducted an experiment that led to the discovery of gravitational waves when two black holes collided. The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge together operate the LIGO Laboratory in the US.

The Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, will lead the project’s gravitational-wave science and the new detector’s data analysis. Tarun Souradeep, a cosmologist at IUCAA said the Indian ‘advanced LIGO’ (aLIGO) will bring about accuracy in identifying the source of gravitational waves and calculations.

Reference : https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00184-z

Image source: https://ligonews.blogspot.com/2016/02/ligo-india-approved.html