more-inIndia’s role in studying gravitational waves — touted as one of the most important discoveries of the recent past — will increase once the proposed gravitational wave observatory is set up in Maharashtra, said David Reitze, executive director of Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). India having a detector improves that dramatically and that’s going to be a big mission,” said Mr. Reitze. Gravitational waves are ‘ripples’ in the fabric of space-time, caused by some of the most violent and energetic processes in the universe such as merger of black holes or neutron stars. “We know we have binary black holes and binary neutron stars, so there must be a neutron star and black hole merger. “Our detectors, even though they are very sensitive and capable of detecting gravitational waves, they are not where we want them to be.

Source: The Hindu January 07, 2018 17:16 UTC