In the distant universe, black holes merge, supernovae explode, neutron stars collide. Colossal events such as these create cosmic ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. In 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO for short) observed this phenomenon for the first time, expanding our understanding of the universe around us. Now, the United States National Science Foundation is partnering with top U.S. universities and India’s Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, or RRCAT (a unit of Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India) to launch LIGO-India, a ground-breaking collaboration, fuelled by a $320 million investment from India, that will accelerate discovery and innovation in India and around the world.
Albert Einstein’s 1916 general theory of relativity first predicted the phenomenon of gravitational waves. But it took physicists another century to prove Einstein right by observing them directly. Most of the history of astronomy has been accomplished by observing light and the electromagnetic spectrum — everything from radio waves to infrared and visible light to high-energy x-rays and gamma rays — but gravitational waves are fundamentally different; they are ripples in space-time, the fabric of the universe itself.
In 2015, for the first time in human history, physicists observed the gravitational waves emanating from two merging black holes, 1.3 million light years from earth. This Nobel prize-winning breakthrough was accomplished by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, known as LIGO, a research initiative that the U.S. National Science Foundation first began investing in the late 1970s.
