World's Third LIGO Observatory In Maharashtra's Hingoli Will Bring Unprecedented Opportunities To Space Researchers

New Delhi: The Union Cabinet has approved the country's first space policy and setting up of the country's first space observatory at Hingoli in Maharashtra.
 

The decision was taken in the cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Giving this information to the reporters, Dr. Jitendra Singh, Minister of State in charge of the Department of Space and Atomic Energy in the Prime Minister's Office, said that the Indian Space Policy 2023 was approved in the cabinet, which aims at the role of the Department of Space, private sector participation, ISRO's missions, expansion and greater participation of research, academia, start-ups and industries.
 

He said that in the world America has only two state-of-the-art observatories in the world to keep an eye on the activities of space and solar system. India has made an agreement with America that the third observatory will be built in India. India's observatory will be the only one to be built outside America.

 

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) will be built in Hingoli district of Marathwada region of Maharashtra. A plan of about Rs. 2600 crore has been approved for the construction of this third observatory. 

 

India is now part of biggest space research in world

The LIGO-India project will be built by by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, with a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the National Science Foundation (NSF), USA, along with several national and international research and academic institutions. The project is being led by four institutions.

 

India is now part of the biggest research in the world that is working in the field of black holes. LIGO is a planned advanced gravitational-wave observatory and would go a long way in research.

 

The mega project is expected to bring unprecedented opportunities to researchers and scientists to dig deeper into the Universe. 

 

LIGO is meant to detect cosmic gravitational waves and to develop gravitational-wave observations as an astronomical tool.

 

An essential element of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, Gravitational waves are found among enigmatic objects in our universe: black holes, neutron stars, supernovae, even the Big Bang.

 

Extracting the information carried by the waves to address questions in both physics and astronomy depends on our ability to identify where the individual sources are in the sky.