LIGO welcome boost for Indian Science

The facility will be part of a global network to study gravitational waves

The gravitational wave detection facility which is planned to be set up in Maharashtra is a major scientific project of world standard, and India does not have any other project like it.

The Union cabinet has given its approval for the Rs 2,600-crore facility, called the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), which will be similar to its namesake labs in the US. LIGO is an international network of laboratories set up to detect and study gravitational waves which contain many mysteries of the universe from the time it was born. The project is expected to become operational only 2030.

There are four such laboratories in the US, Europe and Japan and the facility in India will be the fifth and perhaps the last. It is envisaged as a collaborative project between some Indian research institutions and the LIGO Laboratory in the US, along with its international partners.

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Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time produced by events and processes in the universe involving massive objects like black holes and neutron stars. There was speculation about them for over 100 years, and Einstein predicted them scientifically and convincingly in his theory of relativity. They were first detected in 2015 in the US and the scientists who made the discovery won the Nobel Prize.

The gravitational waves detected then were produced by the merger of two black holes, which were about 29 and 36 times the mass of the sun, 1.3 billion years ago. Till now, at least 10 events producing gravitational waves have been detected. Events like earthquakes, landslides, or even the movement of trucks can influence the hypersensitive instruments in these observatories and produce a false reading. It is to avoid a false reading that multiple observatories are set up in different geographies.

Large scientific projects like LIGO India can improve the country’s scientific profile and make a positive impact on scientific temperament in the country. India has collaborated with other countries on important projects like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments near Geneva and the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experiment), in France, a project to produce energy from controlled fusion reactions. But there have been controversies also over some projects like the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) near Theni in Tamil Nadu. These controversies have often centred round issues related to environment and the rights of people who reside in the area where the projects are sought to be located. While such issues need to be tackled on merit and on a case-by-case basis, they do not detract from the value of such projects. Big science projects and major research initiatives should get encouragement and, importantly, greater funding support.