Gravitational waves: What the discovery means, in layman’s terms

How can a common man comprehend the nano impact of gravitational waves detected in the landmark astrophysics discovery of the century?

Eminent astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar came out with an analogy for the benefit of the layman to explain the complexity involved in detecting the gravitational wave that emanated at a distance of 1.3 billion light years from the earth.

“Imagine a fly sitting on an elephant. The weight of fly is added to his body but the elephant will not feel it.

“What LIGO (the detector used in the discovery) detected was much smaller than the perceived impact of the fly sitting on the elephant,” Narlikar said while speaking to reporters at the city-based Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCCA).

Narlikar, who was the first head of the IUCCA, recalled that he and one of his scientist colleague Sanjeev Dhurandhar had put up a proposal seeking funding for research on gravitational waves in India in 1988 soon after the Centre was set up but had failed to convince the authorities who doubted their “credibility” to undertake such a project for developing a detector.

Congratulating the Indian scientists who formed a part of the international team, Naralikar said detection of the gravitational waves is a “remarkable discovery which will be remembered for long”.

Ajit Kembarvi, former director of IUCCA, said the team of Indian scientists called “INDIGO” which worked on the project made a significant contribution in developing methods for analysing data from the two detectors in the US that recorded the gravitational waves. “IUCCA is also setting up a high performance computer in its premises for further analysis of the data,” he added.

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