India is gearing up to play a crucial role in gravitational waves detection by setting up the world‘s third advanced LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) laboratory in Aundh in Hingoli district of Maharashtra.
Fred Raab, an eminent physicist and associate director for operations, LIGO Laboratory, who was at the Presidency University in Kolkata on Tuesday to address ‘LIGO-India: International Collaboration Coming to India to Help Explore the Universe‘ conference, said the proposed LIGO observatory in India will “refine the physics” of gravitational waves detection.
The LIGO is a large-scale physics experiment and observatory that aims to have a better understanding of the universe by tracking and detecting the gravitational waves, and then use them as an astronomical tool. LIGO research is currently being conducted by the international LIGO Scientific Collaboration (including the Australian Consortium for Interferometric Gravitational Astronomy and GEO Collaboration) and the Virgo Collaboration in Europe. LIGO is largest project ever funded by the National Science Foundation, and two large LIGO observatories have already been built in the United States (at Hanford in the state of Washington and at Livingston in Louisiana) with third one proposed to be built in India.
In June last year, scientists at the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Waves Observatory (LIGO) announced that they detected gravitational waves for the second time – on December 25, 2015.
Earlier in February 2016, LIGO scientists had announced first detection of a large space-time ripple at LIGO labs in Livingston, Louisiana and Hanford, Washington. This ripple was detected on September 14th, 2015, and according to scientists, it had originated from the final stages of two merging black holes, weighing 29 and 36 solar masses and located about 1.3 billion light years from Earth.
Gravitational waves are the ripples in the fabric of space-time that are produced by violent events in the Universe, such as merging of black holes and neutron stars. Waves produced by accelerating masses are believed to propagate at the speed of light.
The waves detected on Boxing Day emanated from the spinning dance of a binary black hole pair – weighing 8 and 14 solar masses – and on the brink of merging. They were located about 1.4 billion light years from Earth, and their merger created another black hole 21 times the mass of the sun, with rest of the mass transforming into a gravitational energy. This energy was sensed by the laser interferometers of the LIGO labs in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington State on 25 December (03:38 GMT, 26 Dec; Boxing Day in Europe).
According to Raab, gravitational waves could help in tracking cosmic phenomenon like black hole coalescences.
“Gravitational waves are extremely powerful but subtle. Black hole coalescences, for instance, are happening every hour somewhere in the universe. The rate of future discovery in gravitational wave astronomy will depend on the number of detectors, which is why the Indian observatory is important,” felt Raab.
According to Fred Raab, the LIGO India project could be commissioned by 2024, and then Indian universities would be required to deliver trained young researchers to contribute in advanced physics experiment.
“We expect it to come up by 2024. The Indian observatory will be part of a worldwide network that connects four continents and scores of scientists in a giant collaborative research. Many people with different talents will be playing a part. It will shed light on how much of the universe is reality and how much is not what it appears to be. LIGO attempts to throw open windows,” said Raab.
“We hope by 2024 a crew of Indian PhDs trained in the science will be commissioning those machines and beginning first observations,” he added.
The LIGO observatory at Hingoli will be a scientific collaboration between LIGO laboratories of the California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and three lead Indian institutions, namely, Institute for Plasma Research, Gandhinagar, the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune, and Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, Indore.
“The effect will be dramatic because it will give us tremendous location information on where the (gravitational waves) sources are. You turn on the detector in India and everywhere in the sky you can pinpoint the sources much better,” explained Raab.
According to Raab, the success of the project however will depend on availability of trained scientists.
“We have opened up this vast new frontier but how well this is explored will depend on raising up in Indian universities, a generation of experimental scientists who will pursue the advancement of these detectors,” he said.
