Editorial: Big moment for science

The LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) project has the potential to change the country’s standing in the scientific world

Despite being endowed with vast resources and human talent, a common refrain against India is that it has repeatedly missed the bus as far as harnessing the potential of technological innovations is concerned. This slow and lethargic response is often cited as the reason why India has been unable to come up with a truly global product. However, the recently-approved LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) project has the potential to change the country’s standing in the scientific world. After years of delays, the final cabinet nod for the project clears the way for building the country’s biggest scientific facility that will join the ongoing global efforts to unravel the mysteries of the Universe by detecting and studying gravitational waves. LIGO is an international network of laboratories that detect the ripples in spacetime produced by the movement of large celestial objects like stars and planets. These ripples were first postulated nearly 100 years ago in Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity that encapsulates our current understanding of how gravitation works. LIGO-India, to be built at an estimated cost of Rs 2,600 crore, will be located in Maharashtra’s Hingoli district, about 450 km from Mumbai, and is scheduled to begin scientific runs from 2030. India has never built a cutting-edge scientific facility on this scale on its soil, and LIGO can have huge spin-off benefits for the science and technology sector. The collaboration is an endorsement of the country’s science capabilities and possibilities.

India is set to play a big role in the future detection of gravitational waves —one of the biggest discoveries of physics made by US scientists in 2015. LIGO-India is part of the plan to expand the network of gravitational wave observatories in order to increase the chances of detecting these waves from anywhere in the observable universe and improve the accuracy and quality of information gleaned from them. Until now, at least 10 events producing gravitational waves have been detected. Besides the United States, such gravitational wave observatories are currently operational in Europe and Japan. India has been an active collaborator in a number of international science projects, including the Large Hadron Collider experiments and ITER, the effort to create a thermonuclear reactor that would enable controlled nuclear fusion reactions. India is also expected to be a partner country in setting up the next space station later this decade. Amid the seamlessness of science and technology, big-league projects have immense importance but the overall science and technology spend in India remains grossly inadequate. There is a greater need for funding large-scale research projects in universities, modelled on the US National Science Foundation, which has played a key role in transforming America’s universities into research powerhouses. China’s Thousand Talents Plan, launched in 2008, is also worth emulating. It brings leading Chinese scientists living abroad back home through incentives.

---