On Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had congratulated the Indian Scientists who received the Special Breakthrough Award in Fundamental Physics for detecting Gravitational Waves. Modi said that “These scientists have been awarded for detection of gravitational waves which is an exceptional scientific accomplishment.”
The jury has recognised the scientists and engineers who contributed to the significant detection of gravitational waves on February 11.
These scientists were awarded $3 million prize money which will be shared between three founders of Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the 1,012 contributors to the discovery which includes more than 30 scientists from Indian institutes.
“There are 37 authors from Indian institutes on that paper describing the detection of gravitational waves and it is a great moment for us. We have detected gravitational waves, but we do not know where to point to and see signatures of these waves. LIGO-India will not only hear but also see where it happened,” said Tarun Souradeep, senior professor at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics.
The proposed detector will be a 4-km long L-shaped interferometer that will use laser light split into two beams that can travel back and forth. LIGO-India has already started the work and the detectors are expected to be operational in seven years.