LIGO India will be the most sensitive scientific device in the world: Prof Rana Adhikari
Costing over $1.4 billion in total, LIGO US is one of the largest scientific projects in the world. In 2016, LIGO detected Gravitational Waves for the first time a hundred years after Albert Einstein predicted their existence in his general theory of relativity.
Experimental physicist Prof. Rana Adhikari during the Chandra Public Lecture at IUCAA. (Express Photo by Arul Horizon)
The upcoming LIGO India project in Maharashtra would be the most sensitive scientific instrument in the world, said Professor Rana Adhikari of the California Institute of Technology and one of the lead scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in the US. Prof Adhikari made the remarks while delivering the Chandra Public Lecture at IUCAA in Pune on Thursday.
“Based on my estimates, this will be the most sensitive detector in the world, beyond what’s happening in the US right now. Because we are starting from a standpoint which is 2015 and improving from there. We are starting fresh now so all of the lessons learnt are already a part of it,” the physicist said.
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“This detector in India will be the first AI-first gravitational wave detector, by which I mean the complicated instruments should be controlled by a mixture of human and artificial intelligence in the future. And that will be a revolution in speed from what we are doing in the US. So this is not us taking components from the US and just assembling here in a mechanical way but we are innovating and making it much better.”
Initially, however, LIGO India will commence operations with older components from the LIGO US. Speaking to The Indian Express after the event, Prof Adhikari said, “Initially we have things from 2015 but we don’t want to accept hardware from 2015. We are getting some old stuff, but everything will be upgraded.”
Costing over $1.4 billion in total, LIGO US is one of the largest scientific projects in the world. In 2016, LIGO detected Gravitational Waves for the first time a hundred years after Albert Einstein predicted their existence in his general theory of relativity.
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Prof Adhikari has been instrumental in bringing the LIGO project to India. It was approved by the Indian government in 2016 and work on the ground began in 2026. Adhikari said there was a debate in the US as to whether the next LIGO project should be set up in Australia or India, and that he pushed for it to be brought to India.
Talking about LIGO itself, Prof Adhikari said, “I think this is the most sensitive device that humanity has ever created. It gives us a great way to look into the future and look into outer space and the universe is really about.”
Experimental physicist Prof. Rana Adhikari during the Chandra Public Lecture at IUCAA. (Express Photo by Arul Horizon) 
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