Pune: David Reitze, executive director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Laboratory, emphasized the need for LIGO-India to integrate newer technologies to enhance its sensitivity. Speaking on Tuesday, he cautioned against continued dependence on outdated components sourced from the United States.
Reitze pointed out that several of the detector components earmarked for LIGO-India were built between 2011 and 2014 While delivering a talk on Tuesday. Reitze said the components meant for LIGO-India will be delivered as part of the India-US partnership, but urged researchers to incorporate current technology so that the observatory can achieve optimum sensitivity when it becomes operational.
He said these have since been superseded by newer, improved components — electronics, optics and lasers, especially squeezing lasers, which were not part of the components set aside for LIGO-India. It is just a question of will,” Reitze said. “We in the US have plans for one more upgrade of our detector, which should improve the sensitivity by a factor of maybe two or more. No reason why India should also not upgrade.
This is the first time India is hosting the biannual conference, which will conclude on Sept 25. LIGO-India, coming up on 100 acres of land in Hingoli, would join the ranks of two facilities operational in the US. The observatory is expected to be unveiled by 2030. The project gathered steam after the two operational LIGO observatories, on Sept 14, 2015, detected a 0.2-second ‘murmur’ from the merger of two black holes 1.3 billion light years away.
You Can Also Check: Gold Rate in Pune | Silver Rate in Pune | Bank Holidays in Pune | Public Holidays in Pune | Petrol Price in Pune | Diesel Price in Pune | CNG Price in Pune | LPG Price in Pune Stay updated with the latest Pune news. Reitze was in Pune to attend the biannual gathering of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration — comprising gravitational-wave researchers from across the globe — at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) here. The event converted three times the Sun’s mass into gravitational waves , confirming Einstein’s prediction of ripples in space-time and opening a new way to study the universe, including its age, composition and dark matter. LIGO at Hingoli would be crucial to these investigations. Download the TOI App.
On Wednesday, LIGO-India and IUCAA will host a panel discussion open to the public and release the second edition of a book on gravitational waves authored by professors Ajit Kembhavi and Pushpa Khare.