After a 100 year long search, Albert Einstein’s theory has come true. Gravitational waves have been discovered.
The scientific landmark is now being compared to 400 years ago when Galileo turned his telescope to the moon for the first time.
As per NASA, Gravitational waves are disturbances in space-time that travel at the speed of light.
These waves are emitted by any mass that is changing speed or direction. The best example could be a binary system, here a pair of stars or black holes orbit their common centre of mass.
The historic search of the existence of gravitational waves was announced in the United States. However, Indian scientists had a significant role to play in the historic discovery. PM Narendra Modi also congratulated the Indian scientists on their part.
As per the scientists who made the announcement, the waves which were discovered triggered by two blackholes colliding to form a larger blackhole almost 1.3 billion years ago. The waves were captured by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Louisiana on September 14, 2015. Another device in Washington also confirmed its existence.
Nine Indian institutes also actively participated in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. 60 Indian scientists were a part of the research and analysis of data generated from LIGO.
Some of the key tasks including the confirmation of the agreement of observed signal with Einstein's Theory of Relativity, searching for a possible electromagnetic counterpart using optical telescopes and others were performed at ICTS, Bengaluru and IUCAA, Pune.
The article was published in CNN
Image Credit: space.com
