Context: The Union Cabinet has approved a gravitational-wave detector project in Maharashtra costing Rs 2,600 crore, estimated to be built by 2030.

Background

• The Indian government granted provisional approval for the project in February 2016. The proponents have now identified and assessed a suitable, stable site for the detector, and are now in the planning phase for the observatory.

• LIGO-India will be the third of its kind in the world, made to the exact specifications of the twin LIGO, in Louisiana (first) and Washington (second) in the U.S. A fourth detector in Kagra, Japan, will also be made.

Why Ligo India Is Important To India and The World?

• The gravitational wave detectors have to combine measurements from different places to get correct data

• The US already has two detectors, and the third one has to be far away from both.

• India is the best place geographically, as it is at the right distance from US observatories.

• For India, building an observatory will give access to technology that can be useful for future precision engineering industries.

Key Points

• Union minister Jitendra Singh stated that a 174-acre land has been acquired in Hingoli district for its development.

• LIGO-India, the third observatory of its kind, will be built to match the specifications of the LIGO observatories in the US, and will work alongside them.

• Currently, the project is being collaboratively worked upon by a consortium of Indian research institutions and U.S. observatories along with various international partners.

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.

Why is a Fifth LIGO Observatory Needed?

• LIGO India will be the fifth detector after Virgo of Italy and KAGRA of Japan. It will significantly improve the likelihood that four detectors are operating at any given moment, playing a critical role in the global gravitational wave detector network.

• Extremely low strength of gravitational waves make their detection very difficult.

• Therefore, LIGO-India is part of the plan to expand the network of gravitational wave observatories in order to increase the chances of detecting these waves from anywhere in the observable universe.

• This will improve the accuracy and quality of information taken from them.

What are Gravitational Waves?

• Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of space and time that travel at the speed of light. They are created by the motion of massive objects, such as black holes or neutron stars, which generate gravitational waves when they orbit or collide with each other.

• According to Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, any object with mass warps the space-time around it. When two massive objects orbit each other or collide, they produce ripples or waves in space-time that propagate outward at the speed of light.

• Gravitational waves are extremely weak and difficult to detect. They were first directly detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in 2015, a century after they were predicted by Einstein’s theory.

LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory)

• It is an international network of laboratories meant to detect gravitational waves.

• Under this, two large observatories (~ 3000 Km apart) were built in the US (Hanford Site, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana) with the aim of detecting gravitational waves by laser interferometry.

• Interferometry is a technique which uses the interference of superimposed waves to extract information.

• Besides the US, such gravitational wave observatories are currently operational in Europe and Japan.

• LIGO-India will be the fifth, and possibly the final node of the planned network.

Significance for India

• 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.