Pune: Revealing the importance of Ligo project to India, Sanjeev Dhurandhar, Professor Emeritus at Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), said, “LIGO-India will be soon set up in India, which, the Prime Minister has recently approved. The geographical location of India, as a country, and the strong base of theoretical scientists in India are the main reasons to set up LIGO-India, in the coming years.
Prof Dhurandhar gave a talk on ‘Nobel Prize in Physics 2017: The Discovery of Gravitational Waves’ at the lecture series ‘Crazy about Science and Technology’ organised by Pune International Centre (PIC) held at Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (IISER), recently.
He has made a significant contribution to the discovery of ‘Gravitational Waves,’ for which the Nobel Prize was won by three scientists from Caltech University in the US. Prof Dhurandhar’s group was instrumental in helping the group for the theoretical calculations and deriving signal from the noise-embedded data received from the cosmos.
During his talk, he covered a wide range of scientific evolution, right from Newton’s Laws to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to the discovery of Gravitational waves. He spoke about a pair of Black holes and the phenomenon of formation of ripples in space-time fabric when these black holes merge, a billion of light years away. He shared his experiences during his work with the Nobel award-winning scientists at Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), and called the entire discovery as a ‘Team Effort.’
The session was chaired by Prof Amitav Mallik, the founder member of PIC and Prof Sangeeta Kale, member PIC and Dean at Defence Institute of Advanced Technology (DIAT) worked as the convener of this event. PIC plans to hold lectures on cutting-edge science and technology every two months as part of its series “Crazy for Science and Technology”. The next lecture will be on Artificial Intelligence (AI).
