“Ladies and gentlemen, we have detected gravitational waves. We did it,” said physicist David Reitze of the California Institute of Technology, sending a wave of applause at a news conference in Washington. Scientists have claimed to have observed the warping of space-time generated by the collision of two black holes more than a billion light-years from Earth. The team said the first detection of these gravitational waves will usher in a new era for astronomy.
The research, by the Ligo Collaboration, has been published in the journal Physical Review Letters. While the world rejoices in the breakthrough, it is of special bearing to India as the team included more than 60 Indians in all. Sanjeev Dharundhar, professor emeritus at the Inter-University Centre of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, was one of the 1,000 key scientists involved in detecting the waves. While the community wasn't too accepting when he suggested the existence of these weak waves that can help detect black holes, he was brought into IUCAA in 1989, by Jayant Narlikar, to help develop techniques for the detection of the signals.
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, finished construction in 1999 in United States and Dharundhar led several groups to research theory based on the data provided by these observatories. Many of his students are today part of the phenomenal discovery. The existence of the waves were first proposed by Albert Einstein in 1916. They come from two black holes circling each other, closer and closer, until they finally collided. David Reitze described it as, “Take something about 150 km in diameter, and pack 30 times the mass of the Sun into that, and then accelerate that to half the speed of light. Now, take another thing that's 30 times the mass of the Sun, and accelerate that to half the speed of light. And then collide together. That's what we saw here. It's mind boggling.”
The Indian Initiative in Gravitational-Wave Observatories was set up in 2009 with over 60 scientists from various institutions of the country like; CMI Chennai, ICTS –TIFR Bengaluru, IISER Kolkata, IISER – Trivandrum, IIT Gandhinagar, IPR Gandhinagar, IUCAA Pune, RRCAT Indore and TIFR Mumbai. Some of the key tasks carried out by these groups were to decipher the LIGO response to signals, the dynamics of the black hole, and to analyse the energy radiated at the time of the collision of the black holes. Bala Iyer, a scientist at Raman Research Institute, Bengaluru, led a team in collaboration with French scientists, to calculate the gravitational waves emitted by the black holes and neutron stars.
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had announced India's intention to host a key facility in 2014. In 2012, National Science Foundation's oversight body, National Science Board had authorised officials to set up facilities in India for the hunt for the gravitational waves. Currently there are LIGO observatories in two states in the US; Louisiana and Washington. A third LIGO-India is under the works as a joint project between Indian research institutes, LIGO US lab, and its international partners. A funding of £12 million has been offered and Indian scientists will be responsible for finding a suitable site to host the detector.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his delight in a series of tweets that read, “Historic detection of gravitational waves opens up new frontier for understanding of universe!” He also congratulated Indian scientists saying, “Immensely proud that Indian scientists played an important role in this challenging quest.”
“Hope to move forward to make even bigger contribution with an advanced gravitational wave detector in the country.”
Karan Jani - Gujarat connection to discovery
Karan Jani (27) of Vadodara was one of the key members of discovery team and also one of co-authors of the research paper. Karan made the super computer simulations of the collision of black holes which matched exactly with the gravitational waves observed in LIGO detectors.
Karan was the member of the research team that first saw the gravitational wave signal in September 2015. He said “This is one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the century. It took 100 years of persistence and unmatched quest of human curiosity to find the ultimate proof of Einstein’s theory. By detecting the gravitational waves, we have concluded that there is a completely new way of the nature communicating with us.”
Former student of Shreyas High School, Vadodara, Karan completed his BSc from M S University and later obtained degrees in astrophysics, astronomy, and physics from Pennsylvania State University in US. At present, he is a doctoral scholar at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US.
