LIGO INDIA - SCI & TECH
News:
Science for all: On the road ahead for the LIGO-India project
What's in the news?
● The
Union Cabinet’s approval to set up a gravitational-wave detection facility in Maharashtra, a ₹2,600 crore project, is
one that will consist of a detector called the Laser Interferometer
Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), to be built in the image of the twin
LIGO instruments already operational in the U.S.
Key takeaways:
● US detection of
gravitational waves, in 2016, launched a new era of astronomy.
● A
third detector is being built in India as part of the LIGO-India collaboration
in order to improve the detector's collective ability to pinpoint sources of
gravitational waves in the sky.
● India
has had a contested relationship with such projects, including, recently, the
Challakere Science City and the stalled India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO).
LIGO:
● LIGO
is an international network of
laboratories that detect the ripples in spacetime produced by the movement of
large celestial objects like stars and planets.
● These
ripples were first postulated in Albert
Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity that encapsulates our current
understanding of how gravitation works.
LIGO-India:
● LIGO-India
will be located in Hingoli district
of Maharashtra, about 450 km east of Mumbai, and is scheduled to begin
scientific runs from 2030.
Significance of LIGO-India:
● India
could become a global site of
gravitational physics research, aiding training and the handling of
precision technologies and sophisticated control systems, ultimately, cementing
a reputation for successfully running an experimental Big Science project.
● LIGO-India
can demonstrate an ability to reckon intelligently with Indian society’s
relationship with science, using the opportunities that Big Science affords.
Go back to basics:
Newton’s law of gravitation:
● Newton
had postulated that the force that makes
any object fall to the ground was also the one that makes heavenly bodies go
around in their orbits.
● Newton
proposed that this was due to the fact that every celestial body exerted an
attractive force on every other body in the universe.
● The
strength of this attractive force which, he found, was directly proportional to the masses of the two bodies and inversely
proportional to the square of the distance between them.
Deficiencies in Newton Laws:
1. The theory did not explain the reason for the
existence of the attractive force between any two bodies.
2. Einstein's General theory of Relativity:
● He
proposed that spacetime was not just a passive backdrop to the events happening
in the universe. It was not a mere transparent, inert, and static stage.
Instead, spacetime interacted with
matter, was influenced by it, and in turn, itself influenced events. It was
like a soft fabric that responds to a heavy object placed on it, and curls
around it.
● General
Relativity also predicted that moving objects would generate gravitational
waves in spacetime, just like a moving boat produces ripples in water. Because
these are ripples in spacetime itself, gravitational waves have the effect of
causing a temporary deformation in a body when it comes in contact. Since the
spacetime itself elongates or contracts during the propagation of the
gravitational wave, everything lying in that spacetime also goes through the
same experience.