Union Cabinet grants approval to LIGO-India to build gravitational-wave Detector in Maharashtra

Category : Science and Tech Published on: April 11 2023

Share on facebook

The Union Cabinet of the Government of India headed by Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi approved the LIGO-India (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory in India) mega science proposal for research on gravitational waves.
The LIGO-India project will establish a state-of-the-art gravitational wave observatory in Hingoli, Maharashtra (India) in collaboration with the LIGO Laboratory in the United States of America (USA).
The LIGO project is piloted by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST).
The project worth Rs 2600 crore is estimated to be built by 2030.
Around 300 acres of land have been acquired for the project.
The LIGO is a giant L-shaped instrument. Each arm of the ‘L’ is 4 kilometres (Km) long.
LIGO Laboratory is a consortium of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
LIGO-India will be the 3rd advanced gravitational-wave observatory established as part of the worldwide network.
Such LIGO observatories are already been established in Louisiana and Washington in the USA.