{"id":8401,"date":"2023-04-08T07:41:37","date_gmt":"2023-04-08T02:11:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=8401"},"modified":"2025-03-29T02:48:50","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T21:18:50","slug":"what-is-ligo-india-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/what-is-ligo-india-project\/","title":{"rendered":"What is LIGO-India Project?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>About LIGO-India Project:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>What is Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO)?<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>LIGO is the <strong>world&#8217;s most powerful observatory<\/strong> that exploits the physical properties of light and of space itself to <strong>detect and understand the origins of gravitational waves.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>At the moment<\/strong>, <strong>there are<\/strong> <strong>two such observatories in the US<\/strong> that are separated by a distance of 3000 kilometres that work in tandem to pick up these gravitational waves.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Each LIGO detector consists of two arms, each 4 kilometres long<\/strong>, comprising <strong>1.2-meter-wide steel vacuum tubes<\/strong> arranged in an &#8220;L&#8221; shape and <strong>covered by a 10-foot wide<\/strong>, 12-foot tall concrete shelter that protects the tubes from the environment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>What is LIGO-India Project?<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>LIGO-India will be an <strong>advanced gravitational-wave observatory<\/strong> to be <strong>located in Maharashtra, India,<\/strong> as part of a worldwide network.<\/li>\n<li>It is envisaged as a <strong>collaborative project between a consortium of Indian research institutions and the LIGO Laboratory in the USA<\/strong>, along with its international partners.<\/li>\n<li>It will be <strong>built by the Department of Atomic Energy and the Department of Science and Technology<\/strong>, with a memorandum of understanding <strong>(MoU) with the National Science Foundation, the US<\/strong>, along with several national and international research and academic institutions.<\/li>\n<li>LIGO-India is a <strong>collaboration between the LIGO Laboratory (operated by Caltech and MIT in the US) and three Institutes in India<\/strong>: the Raja Ramanna Center for Advanced Technology (RRCAT, in Indore), the Institute for Plasma Research (IPR in Ahmedabad), and the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA, in Pune).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Significance<\/strong>: The information gathered by LIGO India could be used in the <strong>field of gravitation, relativity, astrophysics, cosmology, particle physics<\/strong>, and nuclear physics.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>What is a Gravitational Wave?<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>It is an <strong>invisible (yet incredibly fast) ripple in space.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>They travel at the <strong>speed of light.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>These waves <strong>squeeze and stretch anything <\/strong>in their path as they pass by.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Albert Einstein predicted<\/strong> the existence of gravitational waves in 1916 <strong>in his general theory of relativity.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Einstein&#8217;s mathematics showed that <strong>massive accelerating objects<\/strong> (such as neutron stars or black holes orbiting each other) <strong>would disrupt space-time in such a way that &#8216;waves&#8217; of undulating space-time would propagate in all directions<\/strong> away from the source.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1)\u00a0What is a neutron star?<\/h3>\n<p>Neutron stars are formed when a massive star runs out of fuel and collapses. The very central region of the star \u2013 the core \u2013 collapses, crushing together every proton and electron into a neutron.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source:\u00a0<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/opinion\/editorial\/science-for-all-on-the-road-ahead-for-the-ligo-india-project\/article66710950.ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>Science for all: On the road ahead for the LIGO-India project<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LIGO-India will be an advanced gravitational-wave observatory to be located in Maharashtra, India, as part of a worldwide network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":8402,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8401","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}