Another eye in the sky, on ground :India is now part of the world’s largest radio telescope project.
- January 3, 2024
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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Another eye in the sky, on ground: India is now part of the world’s largest radio telescope project.
Subject: Science and Tech
Section: Space technology
Context: India will now also be part of the international mega-science project, the Square Kilometer Array Observatory (SKAO), that will function as the world’s largest radio telescope.
More on News:
- ISRO Monday launched a unique observatory to study X-rays and black holes in deep space and the stage is being set to construct the third node of the LIGO in Maharashtra.
- India, through the Pune-based National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) and some other institutions, has been involved in the development of SKA since its inception in the 1990s.
- The Department of Atomic Energy announced plans to construct the third node of the US-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Hingoli district of Maharashtra.
- The Government’s approval for joining the project, with a financial sanction of Rs 1,250 crore, is the first step towards the ratification
About Square Kilometer Array Observatory (SKAO):
- Intergovernmental: SKAO was established as an intergovernmental organization in 2021 following years of negotiation in which India, too, participated.
- Countries have to sign, and ratify, the SKAO convention to formally become members.
- Member countries include Australia, Canada, China, India, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, the Netherlands, UK, Portugal and Spain.
- Square Kilometer Array Observatory SKAO is headquartered at theJodrell Bank Observatory in the United Kingdom.
- These are aimed at advancing the scope of astronomical observations for improving the overall understanding of the universe and its evolution.
- India’s main contribution to the SKA is in the development, and operation, of the Telescope Manager element, the “neural network” or the software that will make the telescope work.
What is neural networks: Neural networks, also known as artificial neural networks (ANNs) or simulated neural networks (SNNs), are a subset of machine learning and are at the heart of deep learning algorithms. Their name and structure are inspired by the human brain, mimicking the way that biological neurons signal to one another. |
About Square Kilometer Array Telescope (SKA):
- Location: It is located in Meerkat National Park, Africa and Murchison Radio Astronomy Observatory, Australia.
- Intergovernmental: It is an intergovernmental radio telescope project.
- Establishment: The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) was originally conceived in 1991. However, an international working group was set up in
- Objective: The SKA will combine the signals received from thousands of small antennas spread over a distance of several thousand kilometres to simulate a single giant radio telescope capable of extremely high sensitivity and angular resolution. This is done using a technique called aperture synthesis.
About gravitational waves:
- Gravitational wave research is one of the most promising fields for scientific discovery.
- Gravitational waves refers to ripples in space-time which are caused by violent and energetic processes in the Universe.
- Gravitational waves were first predicted by Albert Einstein in his General Theory Of Relativity in 1916.
- The first detection of gravitational waves by the two existing LIGO detectors in the US won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2017.
About LIGO:
- LIGO stands for “Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory”. It is the world’s largest gravitational wave observatory and a marvel of precision engineering.
- It comprises two enormous laser interferometers located 3000 kilometers apart.
- LIGO exploits the physical properties of light and of space itself to detect and understand the origins of gravitational waves (GW).
LIGO-INDIA:
- LIGO-India is a collaboration between the LIGO Laboratory (operated by Caltech and MIT) and three institutes in India:
- the Raja Ramanna Center for Advanced Technology (RRCAT, in Indore),
- the Institute for Plasma Research (IPR in Ahmedabad), and
- the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA, in Pune).
- LIGO-India received the Indian Government’s in-principle approval in February 2016.
- The LIGO-India project will be built by by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, with a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the National Science Foundation (NSF), USA, along with several national and international research and academic institutions.
- LIGO India will be the all-important fifth detector.
- When it begins operation, LIGO India will significantly improve the likelihood that four detectors are operating at any given moment. This is the critical role that LIGO India will play in the global gravitational wave detector network.
About NCRA:
- NCRA is a unit of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
- It operates India’s largest network of radio telescopes called the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT).
- It is the success of building and operating GMRT that landed NCRA this responsibility with the SKA.
About GMRT:
- GMRT is the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope operating within the 110-1,460-Megahertz frequency range.
- The GMRT Observatory is located in Pune (near Khodad).
- This unique telescope has studied pulsars, supernovae, quasars, galaxies and its observation time has always remained oversubscribed.
- GMRT in 2021 became only the third in India to be recognised with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Milestone facility.
- In June 2023, GMRT was among the six top radio telescopes used to enable the detection of the nano-hertz gravitational waves for the first time.