India To House The World's 3rd LIGO To Detect Elusive Gravitational Waves

Following the breakthrough discovery of Gravitational Waves by two American detectors, exactly hundred years after they were predicted by Albert Einstein, astrophysicist Srinivas R Kulkarni from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), USA and Karan Pankaj Jani have successfully persuaded the Indian Prime minister Narendra Modi to set up the third LIGO detection centre in India in the near future.

During the early morning of 11th February, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory announced the much awaited discovery of Gravitational Waves originating from a cataclysmic event in the distant universe, and thereby strengthened the foundation of Einstein’s revolutionary theory of General Relativity. Although the Raman Research Institute in Bengaluru had initially decided to implement the project of building a GW detector, a variety of reasons including lack of motivation, slow progress and a comparatively small budget allocation had caused an untimely abandonment of the LIGO-India proposal of 2011.

The Indlgo project includes the proposed idea of building an advanced gravitational-wave observatory in India as a part of a worldwide network and collaboration among the US National Science Foundation, the Institute of Plasma Research (IPR) Gandhinagar, the Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune and the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT), Indore.

The suggested LIGO India proposal reveals that the detector will be a Michelson Interferometer with Fabry-Perot enhanced L-shaped arms having 4km length and would be designed to detect minute changes from 10-23 Hz-1/2 in the frequency range between 30 to 800 Hz. The site and location of this mega scientific venture has not yet been confirmed although Rajasthan and Maharashtra possess potential vacant areas.

Insiders revealed that the Indian Government is likely to invest Rs 1000 crore for the Indian LIGO project over the next 15 years. Experts also asserted that with the initialization of this project, India would create a new legacy in the field of science and technology and re-establish India’s scientific prowess.

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Source: #-Link-Snipped-# | LIGO-M1100296-v2: LIGO-India, Proposal of the Consortium for Indian Initiative in Gravitational-wave Observations (IndIGO),[Public]