Special Breakthrough Prize for LIGO’s gravitational wave discovery

This year's Special Breakthrough Prize in fundamental physics has been awarded to a team of scientists, including 37 Indians, for their discovery of the existence of gravitational waves, considered as the biggest discovery of the century.

In February this year scientists confirmed the existence of gravitational waves as hypothesised by Albert Einstein a hundred years ago (See: Scientists detect gravitational waves predicted by Einstein hundred years ago).

The $3-million Silicon Valley-backed prize will go to Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss, Ronald Drever and the 1,012 scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (LIGO) who announced the discovery in February this year.

The three conceivers of LIGO - Kip Thorne, Ray Weiss and Ron Drever – will share $1 million of the prize money while the remaining will be shared among the 1-12 LIGO scientists and the LOGO lab itself. The scientists and engineers will get nearly Rs1.32 lakh in rupee terms.

The award will be presented at a ceremony this year

''Gravitational waves are a whole new way to explore the universe,'' said one of the scientist trio. ''They are the ideal tool for probing phenomena in which gravity is ultra strong, and space and time are strongly warped, such as colliding black holes and the universe's big bang birth.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Indian scientists for receiving the prestigious award. ''These scientists have been awarded for detection of gravitational waves, an exceptional scientific accomplishment'', Modi said.

''These scientists have been awarded for detection of gravitational waves, an exceptional scientific accomplishment'', the Prime Minister said.

PM Modi had earlier announced that India will open its own LIGO laboratory for the research purposes.

''Recently the gravitational waves have been discovered by the scientific community of the world, which is indeed a major achievement. We should be proud of the fact that Indian scientists were also part of it. Keeping this in mind, we have taken a decision to open a LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) in India,'' said Prime Minister Modi.

On 31 March 2016, France A. Córdova, Director, National Science Foundation (NSF) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to lead the way for establishing an advanced gravitational-wave detector in India (India to play important role in LIGO project). Indian scientists have started working on the project LIGO India and currently they are finalising the sites for setting up the lab.

The proposed detector will be a 4-km-long L-shaped interferometer that will use laser light split into two beams that travel back and forth down the arms. The project is expected to become operational in next seven years.