What is LIGO-India Project?

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About LIGO-India Project:

What is Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO)?
- LIGO is the world’s most powerful observatory that exploits the physical properties of light and of space itself to detect and understand the origins of gravitational waves.
- At the moment, there are two such observatories in the US that are separated by a distance of 3000 kilometres that work in tandem to pick up these gravitational waves.
- Each LIGO detector consists of two arms, each 4 kilometres long, comprising 1.2-meter-wide steel vacuum tubes arranged in an “L” shape and covered by a 10-foot wide, 12-foot tall concrete shelter that protects the tubes from the environment.
What is LIGO-India Project?
- LIGO-India will be an advanced gravitational-wave observatory to be located in Maharashtra, India, as part of a worldwide network.
- It is envisaged as a collaborative project between a consortium of Indian research institutions and the LIGO Laboratory in the USA, along with its international partners.
- It will be built by the Department of Atomic Energy and the Department of Science and Technology, with a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the National Science Foundation, the US, along with several national and international research and academic institutions.
- LIGO-India is a collaboration between the LIGO Laboratory (operated by Caltech and MIT in the US) and three Institutes in India: 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).
- Significance: The information gathered by LIGO India could be used in the field of gravitation, relativity, astrophysics, cosmology, particle physics, and nuclear physics.

What is a Gravitational Wave?

It is an invisible (yet incredibly fast) ripple in space.
They travel at the speed of light.
These waves squeeze and stretch anything in their path as they pass by.
Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916 in his general theory of relativity.
Einstein’s mathematics showed that massive accelerating objects (such as neutron stars or black holes orbiting each other) would disrupt space-time in such a way that ‘waves’ of undulating space-time would propagate in all directions away from the source.

Q1) What is a neutron star?

Neutron stars are formed when a massive star runs out of fuel and collapses. The very central region of the star – the core – collapses, crushing together every proton and electron into a neutron.

Source: Science for all: On the road ahead for the LIGO-India project