The first direct observation of gravitational waves on February 11 this year will surely open up new frontiers for understanding our universe
Ever since we homo sapiens replaced our neanderthal cousins, we have tried to lay order amongst our species in the form of various governance systems, so that we can apply our species’ advanced intellect to the challenges of survival, evolution, and further exploration. Gradually in many parts of the world we formed rules for political representation to govern ourselves. But as a Frankenstein case, governance has become the challenge that we need to solve.
In the US, the electoral cacophony and fanfare called Super Tuesday took place this month, and it made millions across the world wonder how two of the most disliked politicians in America had managed to win. In India, too, politics managed to shock people when parties blew out of proportion a situation in Delhi where students, including the head of the students’ union, were protesting.
Political institutions, which we ourselves created, may have become the biggest stumbling block to our evolution and exploring our curiosities.
last month marked possibly the greatest scientific discovery of the century. On February 11, 2016, in Washington DC, it was announced that the first direct observation of gravitational waves had been made. This discovery proved right Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity made about a 100 years ago.
It opens up new frontiers for understanding our universe. So far more than 95 per cent of our universe remains imperceptible to traditional astronomy. This discovery of gravitational waves is a development that deserves the application of our species’ advanced intellect to understand what really happened, much more than political clatter.
We have discovered an extraordinary story. Just over a billion years ago, many millions of galaxies away, a pair of black holes had collided. They had been circling around each other, and so by the time they were a few 100 miles apart, they were releasing great amounts of gravitational energy.
When the black holes finally merged, they radiated a 100 times more energy than all the stars in the universe combined to form a new black hole 62 times as heavy as our sun. The waves rippled outward in every direction, and 50,000 years ago at the time when we homo sapiens were also beginning on our path of evolution, these waves entered our Milky Way galaxy.
The story of how this monumental discovery took place is equally mind-boggling. In 1916, Einstein had predicted the existence of these gravitational waves, but it was a hypothesis without any tangible proof. This led to a great deal of speculation and inspired massive numbers of ‘gravitational wave hunters’ to go exploring for proof. There were many false starts and rumours about gravitational waves that even led to the perception that gravitational wave hunters may be careless or at worst liars.
After years of studies, reports, presentations, and committee meetings, the National Science Foundation in the US funded the construction of an enormous gravitational wave detector called the laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (lIGO). The construction in the US of lIGO began 22 years ago.
The US also invited India to set up a lIGO lab because the findings from another distant location in the world would help consolidate the findings on gravitational waves. The Indian Government at that time could not take a decision at the appropriate time. The problem is that the viability of research is often evaluated using the general formula of productivity, which by definition divides outputs by inputs. The outputs are measured by the gross contribution of a research project and the estimated rate of maturity, whereas the input variable in this case is often the cost of the research project.
The lIGO team was diverse. It even included a set of people whose job was to create fake evidence of a gravitational wave so as to booby trap lIGO scientists and this way keep them on their toes. About 60 Indian scientists were also part of the data analysis aspect of gravitational waves discovery. A group, led by Indian Bala Iyer at the Raman Research Institute in collaboration with scientists in France, led the mathematical calculations used to model gravitational wave signals from orbiting black holes and neutron stars.
Another group led by Sanjeev Dhurandhar at IUCAA initiated and carried out foundation work on developing data analysis techniques to detect weak gravitational wave signals buried in the detector noise by looking for the best match between the calculated waveforms and the detector signal.
In their initial proposal to construct the instrument, the lIGO team had warned that the preliminary design was unlikely to detect anything. Nonetheless, they argued, an imperfect observatory had to be built to understand how to build a better one. In this way the Advanced lIGO — an improvised version of the earlier instrument — was scheduled to be unveiled on September 18, 2015. This machine was to be the most sensitive instrument ever built in history to detect anything that was not a gravitational wave.
The results of these efforts were finally borne around 11 am Central European Time on September 14, 2015, when Marco Drago, a 32-year-old Italian postdoctoral student and a member of the lIGO Scientific Collaboration, was viewing the lIGO data remotely at the Albert Einstein Institute in Hannover, Germany. On that day he was the first person to notice that the gravitational waves had reached Earth. It took months for the lIGO team to test and ensure that this detection of the gravitational waves met the statistical threshold of five sigma, which is the gold standard for declaring a discovery in physics.
The September 14 detection of gravitational waves was thereafter officially known as GW150914. It represents the first observational evidence that black-hole pairs exist. Until now, they had existed in theory, because by definition they swallow all light in their vicinity, making themselves invisible to regular telescopes.
Near a black hole, gravity becomes the strongest force in the universe. Einstein had predicted this in 1916, and the lIGO results suggest that his equations align almost perfectly with the real-world observation. Indian scientists have been given credit for the data analysis aspect of this discovery.
Since 2011, a consortium of Indian research establishments have been lobbying to have a gravitational wave detector located in India. Known as the lIGO-India project, it is piloted by the Department of Atomic Energy and the Department of Science and Technology.
After the announcement of the detection of gravitational waves last month, the Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said that it had in-principle approved a proposal to have a gravitational wave detector in India. let us hope that this agenda is not sabotaged by political parties in a quest for votes. We have missed this bus at least once.
The writer is Chief Sustainability Officer for the group of companies, Jindal Steel and Power ltd