LIGO INDIA PROJECT

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Context

• The government has given the final go-ahead to India’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, project.

GRAVITATIONAL WAVES AND LIGO PROJECT: https://www.iasgyan.in/blogs/gravitational-waves

LIGO India Project

• 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.
• 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.

Closing Remarks

• For India, LIGO is a momentous milestone. India has been an active collaborator in a number of international science projects. These include the Large Hadron Collider experiments, and ITER, the effort to create a thermonuclear reactor that would enable controlled nuclear fusion reactions.
• India is also expected to be a partner country in setting up the next space station after the current International Space Station comes to the end of its life later this decade.
• However, India has not yet built a cutting-edge scientific facility on this scale on its own soil, something that can have huge spin-off benefits for its science and technology sector. The India-based Neutrino Observatory, one such facility that has been planned in India, has been facing delays.
• LIGO, therefore, is crucial to demonstrating India’s intent and capability to pull-off complex science projects on its own.
• The new Ligo observatory, in combination with its partners, will let scientists probe deep questions about black holes and neutron stars. "The new detector will improve chances of doing science in India.

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-sci-tech/ligo-india-global-network-labs-study-gravitational-waves-8545293/