37 Indian scientists co-authors of gravitational waves discovery paper

New Delhi: As many as 37 Indian scientists from nine institutes, including Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) here, were co-authors of the gravitational waves discovery paper — awarded the Nobel prize in Physics on Tuesday.

Rainer Weiss, Barry C Barish and Kip S Thorne were named for the award for their decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves. Around 12 scientists from IUCAA were co-authors of the first discovery paper.

Pioneer in gravitational waves astronomy in India, Sanjeev Dhurandhar said Indian contribution played a major role, especially in extracting signal from noise, in detecting the gravitational waves. Scientists stressed the Nobel prize would give impetus to LIGO India project.

The group led by Dhurandhar at IUCAA initiated and carried out the foundation work on developing data analysis techniques to detect the weak gravitational wave signals buried in the detector’s noise by looking for the best match between the calculated waveforms and the detector’s signal. Dhurandhar told TOI on Tuesday, “I have been working and contributing in this field for the past 30 years. India’s contribution is quite a bit and we have played an important role in the discovery.

It was a big challenge. Many thought it was an impossible task 30 years ago, but I took it up and it has received the well-deserved Nobel.”

LIGO India spokesperson Tarun Souradeep said the Nobel prize would give impetus to the India project.